The Secret to Mobile Script Repeatability & Automation

~ Written By Lara Irwin

Judgement Day

Now that mobile is so heavily integrated into every part of our daily lives, employees apply the same judgement to native and hybrid enterprise apps as they do to the apps they use to stream music, play games and get fit at the weekends. Aesthetically unpleasing apps that load slowly, aren’t user friendly or are unfit for purpose, will irritate your workforce and slow down their productivity. 

Mobile Testing Challenges

According to the 2016-17 World Quality Report, there has been a marked increase in all the challenges associated with Mobile and Multi-channel app testing. A lack of the right testing processes takes top spot with 48% citing it as the biggest challenge to creating a quality app that customer’s love. The key to overcoming this is to gain a deep understanding of your end-users’ usage patterns and device demographics, and develop and test across a comprehensive range of devices and operating systems. Real devices are preferable over simulators as then you can replicate user behaviour completely for higher quality output. Executing Test scripts across such a huge variety of devices and platforms is another key challenge, as the differences in keystrokes, input methods, menu structure and display properties mean that using a single script is not a viable option. Also manual scripting is highly time consuming and open to a high level of human error, so an automation tool is essential for speed to market and quality and although more expensive, over time it will be more cost-effective.

Automation & Test Cloud

To combat these challenges, Sogeti has created an automation and test cloud solution with Xamarin, which enables you to run your app on a vast array of real devices, selecting them on the basis of form factor, manufacturer, OS or popularity in your target market. Xamarin is currently adding more than 100 devices to the pool every month. With this solution you can write tests in a single language: C#, Ruby with Cucumber, or Java with Appium and share code for cross-platform tests between iOS and Android. Xamarin’s Calabash framework can automate any test from the UI level down so you can interact with your app exactly as your end-users will, performing taps, double taps, rotations, long presses and pinches. Xamarin can also test an entire app with a single command for a really fast test setup and comprehensive testing of every page.  With both the automation tool and test cloud in one, Sogeti’s Xamarin solution brings you integration and continuous improvement in response your needs, based on the requirements of your end-users.

Free £15,000 Xamarin Assessment

Xamarin is being used by some of the world’s leading brands and smaller organisations are now reaping its benefits too. Niels Frydenholm from eBay Denmark praises it as a complete mobile testing solution that “plays a fundamental role in our continued effort to maintain the highest possible quality of our products and also securing a short time-to-market. Our test setup takes care of most of the tedious work doing regression tests and gives our team quick feedback, while helping us delivering new features at a fast, predictive speed.”

To Get your hands on a FREE* Xamarin assessment worth £15,000 click here.

*Free as a Microsoft customer with DPS vouchers.