Developing apps, from web apps to PC and mobile apps, is now easier than ever before, with great platforms and environments like this Xamarin development software to help you create your own custom apps even without years of programming expertise. Because of this, more and more individuals and small businesses are looking to create apps either to support their marketing or sales objectives, as products in their own right, or just for fun.
This is great, however what many small development teams or lone app developers starting out in creating these kinds of apps are missing is the professional level of testing established software development houses have. Learning all of the methodologies, practices and techniques involved in professional software QA is a career path in itself and not something most hands on developers want to get too involved with, however even if you are developing your apps on your own as a true amateur, it can pay to learn about testing.
Here are three things professional testers can teach you about doing better QA on your own apps:
Testing Begins at the Conception Stage
One important concept to learn is that testing is not just something you do on a finished app or module of code in order to verify it works and is ready to be released. In a commercial software dev environment, QA is carried out on everything, including designs and specifications, and even the idea of the software in its conception stage. This is because the earlier a problem is found, the cheaper and faster it is to fix. Spot a logical problem in your design and you can change your design – spot it in your half finished app and you have to rework a lot of stuff.
Create a Traceability Matrix
A traceability matrix shows which tests cover which requirements. In a professional test team, this might be generated using something like Quality Center, but you can create your own for your app in Excel. Just have your requirements listed along the top, your tests or test scripts listed down the side, and mark where a test covers a requirement. You’ll easily see where there are requirements you don’t have tests for, so you can design new tests to get better coverage. You can then use a copy of this spreadsheet each time you do your tests and mark them as passed or failed, giving you an easy record of your test cycle.
User Testing
Software companies give their products to people from the user community for a phase called ‘user acceptance testing’. You may also have seen software in ‘beta‘, meaning it is basically ready for use but still in a final testing phase using lots of users. You may not be able to organize proper UAT or beta testing, but you can get some people you know to test your software for you. Developers themselves have too much inherent knowledge of the underlying code to test in the same way users unfamiliar with the code do, so you really need that input.
These are three things professional testers will recommend to anyone developing apps without a tester or test team – try using them on your next project for better quality!
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