Mobile Application Testing: Agile Methodology

Didn’t get your newspaper? You look for the news app in your device. Want to order pizza? You again rely on the app in your phone. With such varied facilities all from the comfort of our phone, we often forget what really goes on behind the development of a mobile application.

Developers work day and night to provide us with the best experience possible. So how do they do that? Recently, a new process – Agile methodology – is being undertaken to provide you with the best quality mobile application.

Agile Testing?

If in your childhood, you were reprimanded at every little mistake that happened, you are sure to turn out a responsible person. The same analogy applies to agile methodology for mobile application in which integrating, documentation and quality testing is involved at every step. . As this method requires high customer engagement to take into account the customer’s requirements and feedback after every step, it can be used in projects where the customer is committing to engage in interactive communication from time to time.  

This iterative and flexible approach can be used in complex project where the customer requirements change frequently. A big project can be broken s down into smaller parts and agile methodology can be applied to each of these small parts.

The agile approach to mobile app development focuses on customer involvement, flexible planning, constant evaluation and — of course — risk management. This approach enables requirements and solutions to evolve through the combined effort of the development team and the customer.

Why Agile Testing?

With so many different mobile devices available in the market today and more being developed each year, how does one cope with such ever-changing demand?

• Constant supply of valuable client software, thus ensuring close contact between customer and developers at all stages of the project;
• With changing technological trends, it gets difficult to implement all features into an app. But, with agile testing one can make changes to the project and put forward new demands to it at any stage of development (even before the release);
• Priority information exchange method is a personal conversation, which gives opportunities for all participants of the project;
• The main indicator of Agile implementation success is the high-quality working application;
• Self-organizing teams performing particular tasks, often give better results than a large team dedicated to everything at once;
• People and interactions are emphasized more than process and tools as the customer, developers and testers are in constant communication with one another.

With such advantages, why wouldn’t one want to adopt it?  

Mobile application developers make an app for a device with small screen, less memory and less processing speed. With the sheer number of mobiles present with different operating systems and different carriers, making a mobile app which is fit on one and all devices becomes quite a difficult task for the developers.

Other than that some other problems that the developers face are

• Short Software life cycle development,
• limited hardware,
• rapidly changing technology  
• changing user demands according to the changes in technology.
• Also, UI/UX needs to kept in mind; but with ever changing customer demands it gets difficult.

But, all these shortcomings can be easily met through Agile methodology. First developed in 2001, this approach has been in use for the past 16 years. That itself is a monumental feat and it would be difficult to question its authenticity.

Agile Vs Waterfall

In the waterfall methodology testing and development is the last step of the SDLC. The testing and documentation phases are the most fundamental part of development hence agile methodologies for mobile application development are more effective and efficient for goal driven apps which require error free delivery of information whenever required. The traditional development methodologies can be put to use in the case of entertainment apps. After determining the methodology, we can further refine the process to best fit our project goals. Ultimately, although the way in which we do our work is important, delivering a solid and maintainable product that satisfies our customer is what really counts.

Conclusion

The number of steps involved in Agile mobile app development ensure a smaller footprint, easy and smooth download, error-free app. But, as every coin has two sides , this process has its shares of problems : the lack of integrity of the project and the low quality of the finished product’s architecture. Having said that, you wouldn’t question an executive with several years of experience; similarly, agile methodology has been trial and tested and also after several years of use, it only adds comfort to a developer’s life.