testing Archives - Adventures in QA

Comparison of Test Automation Platforms

July 15, 2019 by Daniel

Test automation, being it web or mobile test automation should be part of every software development team. However, this is still not the case for most of the companies on the market. Whenever I talked to developers, testers or product managers e.g. on conferences the majority of people mention the lack of knowledge, infrastructure or time pressure are the biggest hurdles for them to start with automation. But starting with test automation can be much easier when using a test automation platform*. Test automation platforms usually offer e.g. the infrastructure, a list of supported test automation tools and a setup guide.

Test Automation Platforms

In this article, I want to briefly introduce you to test automation platforms with their pros and cons. For the comparison I picked the following platforms:

Depending on the own software development cycle, the used programming languages and toolchain a test automation platform must fulfill different requirements in order to be used most efficiently.

Smartwatch App Testing

May 7, 2018February 8, 2016 by Daniel

Smartwatches are available since a couple of years and they are becoming more and more important in the wearable industry. In 2015, more than 24 million smartwatches were sold worldwide and this number will likely increase in the next upcoming years. The first editions of the different smartwatches weren’t that mature and offered not that many apps and functionality. However, this might change in the near future and smartwatches can become the next big thing and will extend smartphones and tablets with useful functions. It may happen that you or your company decides to write an extension for your existing Android, iOS app also for the different smartwatch operating systems.

This extension to the mobile apps add more complexity to your environment from a development and testing perspective. In order to handle the new complexity and the challenges this series will help you to understand the different smartwatch platforms and provides you with useful testing ideas to handle this situation.

In the upcoming series I will focus on the following smartwatch platforms:

Reading Recommendations # 41

May 7, 2018November 11, 2015 by Daniel

Reading Recommendations - Adventures in QA

It seems to be that the average amount of recommended blog posts is often six. Maybe it is the amount of blog post I am able to read throughout the week. However, last week I was not able to publish the reading recommendations due to heavy workload but this week there is the latest issue number 41 again. And surprise, it contains again six interesting posts about software testing. There are posts about “The Laws of Sport and Automation”, “Do You Know How to Wow Mobile Users?”, “Why your phone battery is rubbish”, “Failing Doesn’t Make you a Failure”, “Notes from the Eurostar Mobile Deep Dive 2015” and “How to develop into a great speaker”.

Enjoy reading the posts and send me posts that are worth reading and I will mention you and link to your social links or blog.

	The expected result was 42. Now what was the test?: The Laws of Sport and Automation
Source: steveo1967.blogspot.de/2015/10/the-laws-of-sport-and-automation.html

Mobile Test Pyramid

May 7, 2018October 19, 2015 by Daniel

Anyone who is involved in software testing and software test automation should know the test automation pyramid introduced by Mike Cohn (http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/).

This article contains excerpts from my book „Hands-On Mobile App Testing“ published with Pearson Education.

As you can see in the following image, the typical pyramid consists of three layers. At the bottom, there is the automated unit-testing layer, in the middle the automated integration testing layer and at the top there is the automated end-to-end testing layer (including the user interface tests). Each layer has a different size, indicating the number of tests that should be written within each stage. Manual testing is not part of the test pyramid, hence it is shown as a cloud for additional testing work.

But this pyramid is not applicable to mobile apps and mobile test automation. Mobile testing requires a totally different set of testing activities like movement, sensors, different devices and networks compared to other software like desktop or web applications. Lots of manual testing is required to be sure that a mobile app is working as expected in the different usage scenarios.

People in Testing with Katrina Clokie

May 7, 2018October 12, 2015 by Daniel

This time in the “People in Testing” series, I had the chance to interview Katrina Clokie. Katrina is a very passionate software testing expert in various testing fields. She is an active contributor to the software testing community and the editor of the Testing Trapeze magazine. If you have any kind of question to Katrina, you can contact her on twitter.

Daniel: What is currently your biggest challenge at work?
Katrina: Since April I’ve been working in a test coaching role. My biggest challenge has been establishing good individual relationships with all the testers I work with. I spend a lot of time thinking about the number of interactions we have and what they are, as I know their primary responsibility is to their delivery teams and in some ways my work is a distraction from that. I am aiming to be approachable and helpful, without being overbearing and annoying. I hope I’m finding the right balance.