Stepping ahead with UTI (Unified Testing Initiative)

June 22, 2011 — anuragkhode

Dear Readers,

I am feeling good to share some great news with you all regarding our recent collaboration with UTI (Unified Testing Initiative), a non profit organization working for the Quality and Standards of Mobile Applications. Since last few years our blog “Mobile Application Testing” and community site “Mobile QA Zone” are consistently working to address all the issues encountered while assuring the Quality of Mobile Applications. We worked to provide a common platform for this mission and we are doing well so far. It gives me a great pleasure to let you know that this effort has been well appreciated by the UTI, and they’re very interested in hearing your thoughts about a few recent documents they’ve produced to consolidate testing of mobile apps.

Well before I proceed further, I would like to share Mr.Martin Wrigley’s views on this on behalf of UTI.

Straight from Mr.Martin Wrigley:

My name’s Martin Wrigley and I’m Director of Developer Services at Orange and also Chairman of the Unified Testing Initiative (UTI) – an independent, non-profit body committed to working with the industry to improve the quality of mobile apps across all platforms and devices.

Everything UTI does is funded by its members – AT&T, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Oracle, Orange, Samsung and Vodafone.  It’s in our interest to do everything we can to improve the quality of mobile apps.  And we know it’s clearly in your interest too!

We recently came across www.mobileqazone.com and www.mobileappstesting.com and were delighted to find a community of mobile app testers dedicated to the cause.   We’d like to work with you, and gain your valuable input into what we’re doing … and what you think we should be doing.  The UTI members can provide the view of the OEM and carrier, but we need the input from the developer too.

We recently produced two documents, the first of which is the ‘Best Practice for Developing Quality Mobile Applications’.  http://www.unifiedtestinginitiative.org/UTI-Best-Practice

The guidelines feature a wide range of quality issues that we feel developers should address throughout the application development process. Topics range from routine to complex, to provide developers with a comprehensive resource for addressing quality issues consistently. You’ll find recommendations that can be used to raise the quality of any mobile application in areas including connectivity, messaging and calls, user interfaces, language, media, stability, data handling and security.

What do you think?  Is this helpful?  Have we missed anything? Let us know either via this post, or at http://unifiedtestinginitiative.org/blog/?p=9

The second document is a ‘Testing Criteria for Android applications.’

http://www.unifiedtestinginitiative.org/Android-UTC

It’s the industry’s first comprehensive set of testing criteria designed to help developers consistently drive quality into Android applications. It provides a detailed set of test cases against which the entire Android community can test their Android apps before releasing them through their preferred distribution channel(s).

Plus, we’ve been running the Java Verified testing and signing program since 2004, and constantly update the Testing Criteria for Java ME applications, against which all Java ME app that gain the Java Verified Signature have to be tested successfully.  Take a look at the latest version at http://www.unifiedtestinginitiative.org/Java_UTC

We look forward to hearing your thoughts and working together to continually improve the quality of mobile apps.

Thanks!

About Martin Wringley:-

Martin Wrigley is Director of Developer Services for Orange France Telecom, working on the Orange Application Shop programme and the Orange developer programme; Orange Partner.
Orange Partner provides developers with the contacts, information, tools and support required to build and sell mobile applications and solutions to 150 million-plus Orange customers across the globe and is rolling out the Orange Application Shop across the 20+ Orange territories. Martin has 25 years of experience in telecoms and IT, and joined Orange in 1992. Martin is also Chairman of the not-for-profit industry body Unified Test Initiative (UTI) – www.unifiedtestinginitiative.org.

 

Posted in Mobile Application Testing. Tags: , , , . 3 Comments »

Mobile Application Testing: Need,Challenges and Opportunities

June 22, 2011 — anuragkhode

The world today can surely experience the boom of Mobile arena. From feature phones to Smartphone’s    mobile handsets are entering in to market like never ever before. According to Gartner 428 Million Mobile Communication Devices Sold Worldwide in First Quarter 2011, a 19 Percent Increase Year-on-Year. Manufacturers, Carriers Platforms are coming up with their own mobile application stores with hell of free and paid application. From mobile games to business applications and from entertainment to LBS applications mobile application stores are having applications from all horizons. Over 300,000 mobile apps have been developed in last three years and apps have been downloaded 10.9 billion times. But with the opportunities in this market the competition is also getting tougher and tougher. Just to add a fact that 1 in 4 mobile apps once downloaded are never used again. So there is no doubt that in order to get survive in this market Mobile Developers needs to come with good Idea and with Good quality of Mobile applications and here where “Mobile Application Testing” comes in the picture.

Mobile Application Testing is new area in the field of testing. Talking about the challenges I would like to emphasize that Mobile Application Testing challenges are somewhat interrelated but a bit different as per the Mobile Developers and so as for Mobile QA’S. However before indulging directly in to Mobile Application testing, we should know that what are the real challenges this industry is facing.

Challenges in Mobile Application Testing for Mobile Developers:-

1)  Thousands of Mobile Handsets: -For mobile developers, it is one of the biggest challenges that they may ever face. In order to develop a mobile application, one needs to be very sure about the devices they are targeting. According to a research 1388.2 million handsets were sold in year 2010.Thease devices are of different screen sizes, input methods (QWERTY, touch, normal) with different hardware capabilities. Knowing the fact that testing on every device is not possible and feasible at all, the diversity in handsets is a big challenge for Mobile developers.

2) Different Mobile Platforms/OS: – There are different Platforms/OS currently present in the market. Android, IOS, BREW, BREWMP, Symbian, Windows 7, Blackberry (RIM) and so on. Diversity in mobile platforms, different OS versions and platform limitations make it a bit difficult and challenging for developing mobile apps and so for testing them. There might be chance of inconsistency in terms of functionality across multiple devices of same platform and every platform may have some limitations.

3)  Different Mobile Carriers/Manufacturers:-There are different mobile carriers in the market and every manufacturer may have some norms regarding the mobile application, if the application is coming preinstalled in the device. Verizon wireless, AT & T, T-Mobile, Orange, Docomo, Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance are some the carriers.

Please note that Mobile developers here means entity (May be any organization) or a person developing the mobile application and not mere the software developers.

I hope now you are clear about the need of Mobile Application testing and the real challenge this industry s facing for Mobile Application Testing. Here I have just tried to give insight of Mobile Arena growth and Industry challenges.  Just to precise Mobile Application Testing market has a great potential and it can be considered as one of the most immerging field/domain in Software Testing. The more you dig the more it will come out with something. Due to dynamic nature of Mobile Applications and small release cycles of Mobile apps, there are many challenges for Mobile Testers also and this we will take a look in to this in my upcoming articles. Till then Stay tuned and have nice time.

Posted in Mobile Application Testing. Tags: . 3 Comments »