Unveiling New Horizons with Industry Leaders: Our MTES Partner Panel

Sydney Weber

Feb 21, 2024

Reading Time : 8min read

Accelerated Impact, Reliable Release

Industry Insiders Point to New Perspectives for Faster Development

During the recent Kobiton-sponsored Mobile Testing & Experience Summit (MTES), a lot of attention was spent on ways to rethink our approach toward mobile application development. So, it makes sense that one of the most enjoyable presentations of the batch dialed in to focus on the impact of workplace efficiencies, groundbreaking automation, and fresh approaches to streamlining the testing process.

Discussing the matter with us were Johnston Harris, CEO, Appsurify, Inc.; Karen Hsu, SVP of Mobile DevOps and Security Solutions, Appdome; and Lindsay Eaton, Head of Customer Success, Kobiton.

Let’s see what they had to say.

Hsu began by sharing insight into what her organization sees as significantly impacting the mobile application development landscape today.

It’s “the speed of delivery; the speed of the ability to create new mobile apps in spite of all the new frameworks,” she said. “They’re out there and available, in spite of all the new operating systems for Android and iOS, and all the specific functionality that make mobile apps sticky and interesting to use.”

She continued, “We see that developers are under a lot of pressure to deliver (while also) keeping up with security challenges — and there are a number of them. Because of security attacks with GenAI, those attacks are going to happen at a faster rate.”

Hsu then pointed to online marketplaces where hackers sell and exchange malware. “The hackers are using the same tools as developers, and making malware even more powerful. So there are a lot of challenges that the mobile app developers face,” she told us.

Harris was next. I asked him how effective testing contributes to faster app delivery, and in what ways might testing become a bottleneck scenario. He responded by applying my question to ineffective testing.

“When you have ineffective testing, (you catch) bugs late in the process and push back release deadlines,” he all-too-easily reminded us.

But “we’re talking about accelerating app delivery,” he said, “and effective testing in helping you to deliver that. Automation is just one piece of the puzzle; you also have a manual test. The more you get automated, the more you can automate that process and kick off, the faster you can potentially find those regressions early in the cycle,” he told us.

“And one of the key things that we find is that, we ask if people are running their tests as part of the CIC Pipeline,” Harris said. “Very often you have these UI integration test suites running outside the CI5. Because they’re too big to be put into the CI pipeline to be a part of that whole build process. So one area we find that, in overcoming that bottleneck, is by selecting which tests are relevant. So you can bring that full UI feedback into the CI pipeline so that developers and testers get that full regression feedback by only running just a smart subset of tests.”

“Which is very compelling,” he added. “It helps accelerate the go-to-market time.”

Harris had brought up a great point. Engineers and testing professionals the world over are increasingly being asked to accelerate their go-to-market time. I had to follow up, and asked him, “What testing strategies and practices are most effective in accelerating the developments, like the development cycle?”

As we’d learned from other presentations at MTES, common-sense answers tend to prevail. “It’s always the feedback loop, and the developers, the QA developers, (if) we can somehow merge to be on top of each other, there would be just a very strong line of communication… That’s when you’re gonna have the highest velocity for the whole team,” Harris told us.

“It’s always the feedback loop, and the developers, the QA developers, (if) we can somehow merge to be on top of each other, there would be just a very strong line of communication… That’s when you’re gonna have the highest velocity for the whole team”
Johnston Harris, CEO, Appsurify, Inc.

Gleaning new understandings from customer experiences is second nature to Eaton; in her role at Kobiton, she’s familiar with clients searching for time-sensitive resources. She also knows about concerns to properly balance both valuable security initiatives, and demanding release schedules. “What I hear from a lot of customers is understanding vulnerabilities, whether their defects or security, breach opportunities, by device and OS, and understanding where that impacts their customer base,” she said.

“That knowledge can be powerful for them to understand where they need to be able to spend additional development effort, or additional testing efforts, and ensure that they’re shoring up that vulnerability.” But in order to do that, she told us, clients need to know that they have a tool set that can work flawlessly throughout the entire process. And communication is always going to be key.

“When you see teams who are either working as individuals in silos, or their teams are off from one another, that additional time and effort that it takes to communicate what’s being done, or what needs to be done, is time lost from release, or time lost from testing to ensure that we aren’t releasing issues,” Eaton told us.

“And so the importance of ensuring that you have a tech stack that works towards your end goal, and that all of those components are seamlessly tied together, can be the difference between being excellent at mobile app delivery, or (simply) getting to the finish line at some point — whether that’s on time or delayed.”

The conversation I had with Hsu, Harris, and Eaton served as a valuable reminder: A willingness to be open about ideas, and to jointly discuss the challenges we all face, will almost always lead to more efficient collective strategies tomorrow.

My recap here barely scratches the surface of what we covered during this session, and I strongly recommend checking out our full program, on demand.

But it’s not just this specific conversation that can benefit your own testing management strategy; all of our presentations rewarded audiences with foundational insights and key considerations, most of which are bound to resonate across the digital landscape for years to come.

My biggest, single takeaway? It’s simple. Our industry is on a fast track, answering the call of higher and more exacting expectations every single day. It can feel like the success of an entire product development cycle rests firmly in our hands (because it does!). But – to echo a sentiment heard across all of our MTES presentations – change is taking place, and it’s happening fast.

Rethinking the way we strategize, the way we collaborate, and the way we achieve even the simplest of tasks is necessary to move ahead.

Check out our previous MTES recaps:

To enjoy the full program, watch MTES on demand.

About The Participating Organizations on Our Partner Panel

Appsurify is an AI-powered risk-based testing solution. “When developers change an application, we’re able to determine where that change is made, then autoselect and execute just a few tests associated with that change area. So, rather than running 100% of your mobile Appium test, we’re able to just focus on the top 5% of the test, and still catch the functional [aggressions? 1:40] in that change set. So, optimize CI pipelines, optimize test [runs?], get feedback faster, to developers to find these functional aggressions earlier.”

Appdom is a company which proclaims its mission to be the protection of “every mobile app in the world, and the people-who-use-these-mobile-apps-in-their-lives network. As a technology, Appdom is a platform for building, testing, releasing, and monitoring all mobile app protections in the DevOp CIC pipeline, so our customers are able to accelerate the delivery of mobile app security, anti-fraud, anti-malware, anti-cheat, anti-bot, and other defenses in Android and iOS apps.”