Top 12 Skills Every Mobile Application Tester Needs

The proliferation of mobile devices and the ubiquity of mobile applications has led to a dramatic shift in how tech companies interact with their users. Once desktop platforms and applications were the primary way, mobile devices and apps have overtaken them as the leading interface.

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This shift has been driven by the convenience and portability of mobile devices and the increasing functionality of mobile apps. As a result, product designers are now focusing on developing mobile-friendly products and services that can be accessed and used on the go.

Did you know that 70% of users are likely to uninstall or abandon an app if they encounter crashes or slow load times?

With the growing market, competition among various players intensifies. Delivering pleasant, functional, and reliable multi-experience apps becomes a necessity. Hence, Quality Assurance (QA) led by mobile application testers ends up being a vital part of the SDLC as it optimizes both the application and its usability in the hand of the user. 

This guide will help you upskill your mobile application tester skills and help you stand out as an impactful player in the QA team.

What is a Mobile Application?

A mobile application is a software bundle with a well-defined set of functionality that runs on a mobile device. It could be a web app or an application developed on the native operating system. In the current scenario, Android and iOS have the largest share of the market for mobile and handheld device operating systems.

There are some essential differences between web and native applications. Once you’ve understood the fundamentals behind mobile application testing, the next step is to set up an infrastructure and workflow for all testing-related activities.

QAOps is sometimes used to describe this part of the Software development life cycle (SDLC). 

The best mobile app testing tools depend on the platform, programming language, and overall approach chosen by the developers.

There are some differences and some overlaps between various application platforms:

Before Android and iOS were famous, there were platforms like Blackberry, Symbian OS, Windows mobile, etc. So, your app tester skills keep changing and evolving with the mobile market.

Keeping this in mind, let us look at the current landscape of mobile application testing and highlight some of the most critical mobile application tester skills.

Mobile Application Tester Skills 

A sound approach to optimizing the mobile app testing process involves design thinking principles applied to the testing cycle. Per your mobile app testing checklist, application development tester skills should cover general, team-related, technical, and platform-specific concerns. Let’s dive into it. 

General Interpersonal Skills

• Deep Understanding of Business Use Cases: Before starting the testing process, a mobile application tester needs to have the proper context and direction, which can only be achieved by understanding the use cases and user expectations. Everything else is downstream of this. What defines a defect is when the application does not function according to the business or the user’s needs. Hence an understanding of the two is critical.

• Analytical & Organizational skills: Mobile app testing can be a complex process involving many different tasks and team members. As such, testers need to be organized and keep track of all the different mobile testing challenges. QA engineers need to be able to assess a problem and identify potential solutions. They also need to evaluate the impact of a change and determine the best course of action.

• Attention to Detail: Mobile apps usually contain many pages, functionality, and even other applications in the ecosystem, so they must be thoroughly tested before release. This means paying attention to even the most minor details. 
• Effective Communication: The ability to communicate effectively is one of the essential skills a mobile app tester can have. After all, part of the QA process is communicating with developers to report bugs and provide feedback. If a tester can’t communicate effectively, the whole process breaks down.
• Solopreneur & Team Player: QA engineers need to be able to work independently to identify and solve problems. They also need to work effectively as part of a team to ensure that changes are properly tested and implemented.

Technical Mobile Application Tester Skills

• Understanding SDLC: Testers work closely with development teams in implementing and executing test plans. A preliminary understanding of the software development life-cycle and for developers to have a basic know-how of the inner workings of the QA team will help them develop a fruitful work relationship over a long duration.
• Application Platform Depth: The meaning of a mobile app could mean different things in different situations. Generally, it is either a native Android/iOS app, a progressive web application, or a mix of the two. Testing PWAs differ from native applications because native applications use different APIs and programming languages to interact with the host device. A native Android application has slightly different capabilities than a PWA running on android. Similarly, PWA running on Android could have slightly different behavior than the PWA running on iOS.

• Formulating Test Plans and Strategy: The first step of the QA journey is to develop a detailed document listing all the use cases and mobile app testing scenarios that need to be evaluated. This can only be done correctly if the mobile application tester profoundly understands what the user is trying to achieve in the application. The repository of test optimization techniques is quite vast, and it takes an experienced tester to judge what technique should be applied where.
• Choosing the Right Testing Tools: Like mobile devices, the market for testing tools is also evolving rapidly. Technologies like AI/ML bring significant disruptions across the board.
  With the advent of cloud-based platforms, what used to be an isolated job has now become a collaborative effort. So keeping up-to-date with the latest and greatest in the world of cross-browser testing is a must for all testers aspiring to grow.

• Setting Up Right Test Environments: For mobile devices, the range of actual devices is extensive, and each device has different hardware in terms of processor, memory, network antennas, screen size, input type, etc.

Making sure that testing is executed on real device cloud after you build an effective device matrix is critical.

• Writing Automation Scripts: This might be the most crucial skill for aspiring QA engineers in the current market. Automation has become popular amongst remote QA teams and tech start-ups in the last few years.

• Testing under Real User Conditions: The effect of screen gestures, network traffic conditions, geolocation, device orientation, and device language are among some of the real user conditions, which are different for each. 

These things can affect how an application is rendered on any mobile device, so having the ability to control all these features is a must for mobile application testers.

With BrowserStack App Live, you can

• Adjust real-world variables like network conditions & geo-location
• Test accessibility features like navigability and screen readers
• Instantly check the responsiveness of your web application across a range of devices
• Record and share screenshots from a range of Mobile and desktop devices

Sign Up & Start Testing

• Logging and Recording Behavior: With the ability to test the mobile device features in-depth, the next most important thing is defect management. One of the most crucial app tester skills is the ability to record the activity in several ways, including system logs, screenshots, screen recordings, and defect logging.

• Data Visualization:  Once there is sufficient throughput of test activity in routine, it is the right time to implement a data visualization and optimization strategy, which involves representing the test data in a visual form and sharing it with stakeholders so that the team members can derive conclusions.
• Organization Level Management: Testing activities can get complicated when the scope of applications and test functions increases. Managing testing infrastructure, resources, outcomes, and goals can get tricky in a large organization or where the application stack is broad and spans across devices. 

Thankfully, with features like Single Sign-on, Test Analytics, and Parallelization, BrowserStack Enterprise provides an unparalleled ability to manage everything from testing in localhost to testing in production from one single point of entry for all your team members.

In Conclusion, 

• Despite not being a direct contributor to the application code or design, an effective mobile application tester can bring out critical flaws in the application’s design or functioning, saving their employers money and users’ trust.
• Any mobile application tester’s skills should include a mix of technical and non-technical skills. A skilled mobile app tester can transition into a QA Manager by ensuring the quality of software/product releases.
• In the current competitive market, attaining or upgrading mobile app testing skills can help a company to attain success swiftly and avoid pitfalls.