Category Archives: mobile

Technical Mobile Testing At The Test Masters Academy Masterclasses

February 28, 2016 Stephen Janaway Leave a comment

I’m really excited to be partnering with Richard Bradshaw, a.k.a. Friendly Tester for some Technical Mobile Testing tutorials this year. The first one will be in New York as part of the Test Masters Academy Masterclasses on 25th and 26th April.

Technical Mobile Testing

Technical Mobile Testing builds on the Mobile Testing tutorial I’ve taught over the last couple of years, and is aimed at those who want to go deeper into mobile testing and get more technically focused.

If you have found yourself testing on mobile recently, you have probably considered or tried introducing some automation or tools into your testing efforts. You are probably thinking along the lines of, how can I make this easier? But it can appear a daunting task; there are so many frameworks and so many tools out there, so where do you start? In the tutorial we will try and help you answer that question.

What The Tutorial Covers

In this tutorial you will pick up useful hints and tips, learnt from within the industry. We plan to cover the following areas over the two days.

The Mobile Market and How It Affects Testing.
Why Get More Technical and How To Start.
Using Chrome Developer Tools and Safari Web Inspector to test mobile websites
Utilising XCode / iOS Simulator.
Android Virtual Devices, Emulators and Genymotion.
Getting the most out of Android Debug Bridge (ADB).
How to utilise proxying when testing mobile.
Recording your testing from the device.
Using GUI automation frameworks available.
Creating some GUI automated checks using Appium.

We’ll look at how to use simulators and emulators, simulate networks, fake locations and a whole lot more. You’ll pick-up tips on how to use the developer tools and SDKs, build apps, deploy apps to devices and view and change the network requests that apps make.

If you come along then you’ll leave with the knowledge needed to get far more technical with mobile and a great toolbox of hints and tips and hand-ons experience.

Coming Along? – What To Bring

We’ll be using the common SDK’s for iOS and Android so you’ll need to install XCode and Android Studio, and have Chrome and Safari installed. We’ll help you with the setup and get you started.

And bring devices. Lots of devices 🙂

Stay For The Conference

Test Masters Academy have a great line-up of both tutorials but they also have a one day conference on 27th April. Have a look at the line-up – there’s some really interesting stuff on the program.

Hope to see you there.

mobile, Testing

A Mobile Testing Cheatsheet from EuroSTAR 2015

November 12, 2015 Stephen Janaway 1 Comment

I was lucky enough to be at EuroSTAR 2015 last week. As well as presenting my experiences and thoughts about the future of Test Management, I also spent most of my Wednesday in the rather excellent Test Lab.

We found lots of bugs in the DrinkedIn app during the Mobile Testing sessions that I ran. The first session was for beginners and to help us along I prepared a mini cheatsheet for mobile testing, listing some popular mnemonics and heuristics to use. I thought everyone might find it useful – so here it is.

Mobile Testing Cheatsheet – Stephen Janaway

Comments, suggestions, etc are most welcome.

conferences, Eurostar, mobile, Testing

Teaching Mobile Testing in the EuroSTAR 2015 Test Lab

November 11, 2015 Stephen Janaway Leave a comment

If you go to EuroSTAR, or any other conference for that matter, and you don’t take the opportunity to do some testing, and talk and learn from people whilst doing so then I think you’d be really missing out. The Test Lab is a great place where you can just hang out with other testers, speakers and guru’s. It makes everyone really accessible. You can learn a lot.

You can also get extremely frustrated trying to figure out the various black box machines, other testing challenges and even how you might go about firing a rocket from a tank.

I did a couple of Mobile Testing sessions, the first for beginners and then the second one as a mob testing effort. We found lots of bugs – our app of choice for the testing was DrinkedIn (the drinkers LinkedIn – check, it’s a real thing and available for both Android and iOS :)).

I had great fun teaching, and I hope those who came along to my sessions went away knowing a bit more about mobile testing. If you are at EuroSTAR next year then be sure to get along to the Test Lab. Hopefully I’ll see you there.

mobile, reviews

Book Review: Hands-On Mobile App Testing By Daniel Knott

November 20, 2014 Stephen Janaway 3 Comments

Something different for the blog this time – I’ve been reading a new book that Daniel Knott has published on Leanpub. It’s called ‘Hands-On Mobile App Testing‘ and it’s intended to give a good start to those in the software testing industry who are getting started in mobile, as well as those who have been in the area for a while. In fact Daniel himself describes the book as:

“A guide for mobile testers and anyone involved in the mobile app business.

Are you a mobile tester looking to learn something new? Are you a software tester, developer, product manager or completely new to mobile testing? Then you should read this book as it contains lots of insights about the challenging job of a mobile tester from a practical perspective.”

It’s a very well researched book and Daniel has clearly put a lot of time and effort into writing it. As someone who also trains testers who are getting started in mobile then I liked the logical flow through the chapters. The book starts with a chapter explaining why mobile is different and setting the scene for more specific areas that are re-visited in more detail in subsequent chapters. I particularly liked the section “Mobile Testing Is Software Testing” because it’s important to note that testing on mobile is complicated and that should not be overlooked.

Useful Information

The book contains a lot of specific technical information relating to mobile, meaning that it also serves as an interesting read for someone who may want to know more about the subject but not necessarily apply specifically to testing. The section on business models, for example, is certainly widely applicable. Keeping the information in the book updated may well be a challenge, given the pace of change in the mobile world, but by using Leanpub I hope that’s something that Daniel will do.

The Customer

I appreciated the focus that the book puts on the customer; in mobile the customer is so close, and can leave feedback so quickly, that a key testing skill is understanding them and using that understanding to drive testing. The book goes into plenty of detail in this area.

Covering Common Areas

You’ll also find some very useful information on the areas that I typically get asked about by testers who are new to mobile; areas such as device fragmentation, hardware dependancies, using simulators and automation. The book is full of helpful hints and tricks, and is also a great reference source. There’s also a whole chapter on mobile test strategy that would help both test managers and testers who are new to mobile.

Mobile Automation

Automation is an area where mobile is relatively immature when compared with desktop, and I was pleased to see a whole chapter dedicated to the subject. If you are choosing a tool, there’s some great hints on how to go about making that decision, as well as information on the current tool landscape.

Conclusion

The book then concludes with sections on important skills for mobile testers and a look to the future of mobile. Some of the important skills explained are just as applicable to software testing in general, rather than mobile specifically, but the chapter does then get more mobile specific. It was also interesting to read Daniel’s thoughts on the future; the mobile world moves so quickly that what’s future now very rapidly becomes present, and already we’re seeing some of the future technology described being available for us to test (and buy).

Overall I found the book to be a really useful addition to my library. There are not enough books on mobile testing as this is certainly one I would recommend. It’s not just about mobile application testing either, there are sections on mobile web as well as information about the mobile world in general. Hopefully Daniel keeps updates coming via Leanpub to keep it current.

If you want to know more about mobile testing then I would certainly recommend that you take a look at the book.

You can get Hands-On Mobile App Testing from Leanpub.

Note: I was provided with a free reviewers copy of the book for the purpose of writing this review.

mobile, practices, Presenting, Testing

London Tester Gathering Workshops 2014 – Mobile Software Testing

October 14, 2014 Stephen Janaway Leave a comment

Later this week it’s the London Tester Gathering Workshops. I attended this event last year and it was great. There was a brilliant variety of workshops, and a lot of great testers to talk to. Very recommended.

The Workshop

This year I am giving a workshop on Mobile Software Testing. It’s on Thursday 16th Oct and I have four hours in which to give an intro to mobile, and give the attendees the opportunity to try out some common mobile tools.

The workshop will focus on giving you a basic overview of mobile testing but then will focus on you discovering how to test mobile websites and applications using the tools below. It’s not a lecture and I won’t give you all the answers, but I hope we’ll have some fun along the way as we discover more about mobile testing.

What You Should Bring

If you are coming along then it’d be great if you brought with you:

A laptop with:
- The latest stable build of Chrome on it.
- VirtualBox.
- The Genymotion Android emulator.
- At least one device image (I’d suggest the Samsung Galaxy S5).
As many mobile devices as you have.

If you haven’t got the Genymotion emulator then I will bring along a standalone version that can be installed for Mac or PC from a USB stick. But if you have already downloaded it then that would make things much smoother and you’ll have more time to use it.

There will also be a bit of a competition at the end so have a think about what application or website you might like to test. You’ll be able to choose anything you want 🙂

Hope to see you there.

conferences, Experiences, mobile

I’m at Mobile App Europe – Day 3

October 1, 2014 Stephen Janaway 4 Comments

Time for the last day of Mobile App Europe.

The final keynote – The 7 Deadly Sins of Mobile Apps from Jonathan Kohl.

Saurabh Agarwal is now talking about ‘Tackling Fragmentation in the Mobile App World’.

Marc C Lange gave a really interesting presentation called ‘How to Slim Down Product Management, Gain Valuable Insights and Make Customers Early by Leaving Your Comfort Zone’. He gave some excellent tips on how to understand users and how to consider mobile prototyping. I mindmapped his session.

A really interesting presentation on Appium from Andreas Ludeke. He even did some live coding – a brave man – which worked! I did a little mindmap of the session.

First up – Julien Lesaicherre talking about Building the Future of Mobile Apps With Facebook. I mindmapped the session and you can find my map here.

Julien’s slides are here.

conferences, Experiences, mobile, Presenting, Testing

I’m At Mobile App Europe – Day 2

September 30, 2014 Stephen Janaway Leave a comment

So it’s day 2. I’ll be blogging as much as I can, scroll down for the earlier sessions.

Dr Cheahan So talking about Why We Are Wrong When We Think We Are Right.

Next up – Peter Varhol, who is talking about Mobile Apps and the Role of Load Testing. Here’s my mindmap.

Stefan Gwihs and Philipp Strelka talked about the use of emulators and simulators in mobile testing.

Some interesting stuff, particularly about how a test approach should not be purely UI driven. My mindmap is here.

First the keynote. Unfortunately Daniel Knott couldn’t make it – fortunately he put his slides up on slideshare.

Everything is not lost 🙂 – we have a new keynote – Mobile App Quality at Paypal.

conferences, Experiences, mobile, Presenting

I’m At Mobile App Europe – Day 1

September 29, 2014 Stephen Janaway 1 Comment

I’m at the Mobile App Europe conference in Potsdam.

This morning I gave my presentation ‘Mobile Testing, That’s Just a Smaller Screen, Right?’ – you can get the slides on slideshare.

I’m here for the rest of the conference and I’ll try and mindmap a few sessions.

Martin Wrigley is now talking about ‘Effective QA – Is It Really Necessary?’ Hint, yes it is 🙂

This afternoon I spent some time in Bill Matthew’s Security Testing Workshop. I mindmapped his slides.

Next Up – Christian Kaar from Runtastic with 10 Ingredients to Rock the App Store with Your App. Here’s my mindmap.

The first one is ‘All Together Now – Apps for the Next Platform: Making Watches, Wearables and Web Work’ which was presented by Lars Kamp. A very interesting and informative presentation about wearables.

mobile, Presenting, Testing

London Tester Gathering Workshops 2014

September 17, 2014 Stephen Janaway 1 Comment

The London Tester Gathering Workshops 2014 are nearly here. Last year I had a great time at the event – it had a really inclusive feel and I learnt a lot from the sessions that I attended.

My review is here, if you want to read about how good it was last year 🙂

This year I’m running one of the workshops. It will be about Testing Mobile Software, and promises to be a lot of fun (I hope).

Want to take part in a hands-on workshop and get an overview of mobile testing? Stephen Janaway will explain some of the common mistakes that are made when starting to test mobile, and will give you the opportunity to put into practice what you learn straight away.

We are increasingly moving towards mobile devices to fulfil our day-to-day computing needs. More smartphones are sold than PCs but many people are unclear on what changes to test strategies are needed when working with mobile.

We’ll spend a majority of the session testing a mobile application across a variety of platforms, and reporting the results in real time to the rest of the group. All you need to bring along is an open mind and as many mobile devices as you can get your hands-on.

Tickets are currently a bargainous £250+VAT until 19th September, and for that you get two full days of workshops, covering everything from mobile to automation, exploratory testing to creative thinking. Well worth it.

What are you waiting for? Sign up 🙂

conferences, Eurostar, mobile, Testing

I’m Speaking at EuroSTARonline – 16th September

July 25, 2014 Stephen Janaway Leave a comment

Some exciting news – I’m going to be presenting a webinar at the EuroSTARonline Software Testing Summit on 16th September. The virtual, online, conference is free to attend and there’s some great speakers. You should sign-up. You really should 🙂

I’m presenting a talk about “The Current State of Mobile Testing” and answering questions afterwards.

I’m interested to know what people are most interested in knowing about. Have you just moved into mobile testing and want to know the basics, or are you a more experience tester who wants some detailed information about a particular area of mobile?

Are you starting to use, or already using, automation for mobile?

Are you testing phones, tablets, set-top boxes, smart watches or Google Glass applications?

If you want to play a part in helping to define what I talk about, and hopefully learn something that will really benefit you, then get in touch.