In a mobile-first digital world, smartphones are rapidly taking over desktops in terms of web traffic, unsurprisingly due to changing consumer behavior.

Today, more than ever, the speed of software development matters. But sacrificing quality for speed is a recipe for disaster. High-functioning teams swear by testing as a hedge against such risks. Businesses have identified the ‘mobile-first’ opportunity and are gearing up to face critical challenges in delivering quality at the pace.

BrowserStack hosted QA leadership summit where Antoine Craske, Director of Technology Transformation at La Redoute, and Todd Eaton, Head of Consumer Product Systems, Security and Access at The Weather Company, shared valuable insights on achieving quality software development at an enhanced pace for mobile applications.

Here are the key takeaways from the discussion that will help your QA team:

1. Know your audience

Recognizing the target audience and understanding its drivers, motivations, and pain points help lay a strong foundation for testing. A tester can create real-life use cases and scenarios by analyzing user workflow. This practice continuously improves the user experience.

Additionally, knowing the types of devices used by the customers helps in limiting the scope of testing by choosing a sufficient number of most commonly used devices.

Analysing the trade-off between available alternatives helps in setting up the test organization. Using a cloud based alternative such as BrowserStack is beneficial to increase device coverage and solving the fragmentation problem as maintaining an in-house device lab comes with its own set of pros and cons. Basing your decision on your business objective is crucial.

2. Review and measure

Setting a group of metrics helps define the software product's quality. Keeping an eye on the following is essential:

  • Front-end performance metrics

Providing a seamless user experience is the ultimate test of your software. Analyzing metrics such as application response time, screen rendering and app crashes, is a good starting point for understanding how users perceive the software. However, the testing team should analyze the data that best fits their requirement.

  • Back-end performance metrics

Metrics such as server response time, DNS lookup and connection time have a cause-and-effect relationship with front-end performance indicators. It is imperative that they are monitored and analyzed with precision.

Periodical monitoring and recalibration of these metrics as per business goals help improve test quality and minimize the time and cost incurred. Hence, enhancing the quality of your software.

3. Focus on incremental improvements

Once your testing team has set up processes for delivering bug-free software, the focus needs to be shifted toward delivering quality software at speed. Velocity and speed are the consequences of doing things right in the first attempt. Testing across devices, OS, and browser combinations gives developers the confidence to push the code without worrying about bugs.

For deploying quality software faster, using test management tools and having a common objective across teams and organizations is crucial. Being in tandem internally helps everyone move towards achieving test maturity.

Providing a positive end-user experience is the ultimate objective of a successful organization. A move towards achieving test maturity can prove to be the defining factor in realizing this goal. Watch the following discussion from BrowserStack QA Leadership Summit for more information.