[Survey] Says Testing is Primary Bottleneck in Releasing New Apps

A brand-spankin’ new industry survey conducted by Kobiton on mobile app testing trends has proven two things: (1) Mobile app testing is about to get wicked and (2) QA teams deserve superhero capes! The report will be ready in just a week or two. So whether you’re a tester, developer, QA manager or someone who’s not in software at all, but enjoys wasting time on irrelevant facts for no reason at all, here’s a little sneak peek at the survey results.

Numbers don’t lie

The March 2018 survey, which polled 125 mobile testers and mobile app developers, came back with proof that we’re not just making up a bunch of crap so that you’ll buy Kobiton. One of the biggest findings was that testing mobile apps is taking up more time and resources than ever, and it’s about to get worse. It’s like taxes or that ungrateful little nephew who wants more expensive birthday gifts every year, but never thanks you for what you sent. It sucks, but you still do it.

We’re definitely NOT saying testers are greedy, and they sure as hell don’t wantextra work. Businesses don’t want additional costs, either. But the fact is, organizations are spending more money to test more mobile apps, with greater frequency. The numbers don’t lie:

• 36% are currently spending more than $100,000
• 66% are spending more than $50,000
• 79% will increase spending on mobile testing over the next year
• About one-third have tested 10+ mobile apps in the past year
• Over half are testing mobile apps daily
• 82% will increase testing frequency next year

The survey showed only 6% of organizations skated out of 2017 with a mobile testing ‘tab’ of less than $25,000. When was the last time you were excitedabout paying $25-grand? What if you and all your buddies went drinking and the cheapskate of the bunch bragged that his tab was only $25,000? This is not chump change, people!

It’s not all bad, just hard

The extra work, expense and pressure which QA faces to test more apps and release faster does have some perks, such as job security:

• 72% of respondents will increase mobile tester headcount in the next year

However, runaway digital consumption and rapid adoption of DevOps is forcing some hefty challenges on QA teams. In our opinion, QA needs capes. All of a sudden they’ve become the bottleneck in a build/release cycle that’s shrinking faster than Costanza in a cold pool!

On one hand, Dev wants mobile app delivery in days/hours instead of weeks/months. The mobile app market’s hot; they want to be first with the coolest features no matter what type of app, device or OS is accessing the app. On the other hand, QA knows that when you speed up, quality suffers. It’s not brain surgery. What you end up with is this big, fat bottleneck in the DevOps/release cycle. In fact, a QA bottleneck is the #1 challenge with mobile testingcited by respondents (23%). Why is mobile app testing so hard? Most respondents felt their hands were tied in terms of reliable testing resources and keeping up with the Test Automation train, in comparison with the rest of the Dev organization:

• 28% can’t get access to enough (or the right) devices, or they lack budget for real-device testing
• 19% struggle to either get started with, or to find time to establish, Test Automation

Smarter mobile app testing strategies

The only answer here is for companies to get smarter about their mobile app testing strategies. If you’re a Kobiton customer, then you’re already there!

Even for those not using Kobiton (yet), many companies are already on the right path. That is, they’ve started to question what they’re getting, vs. what they really NEED, from their mobile testing cloud. The harsh reality is that legacy mobile testing clouds blow chunks.

These labs charge a fortune, especially when you consider their hidden costs and fees for crap you’ll never use, such as the browser your granny uses to play Fortnite. These device clouds use simulators and other technologies that are out of date, resulting in incomplete testing and costly app abandonment. Some do not support manual testing or device management, but any good tester knows you need to get test data from devices both in-the-cloud and on-premise – preferably stored in the same place. (Duh!)

In addition, legacy labs typically do not support automation. Or they have proprietary IDE frameworks, so it’s a colossal pain to set up the platform with your existing dev toolsets. Most testers we know would rather walk through all 43 quintillion combinations of the Rubik’s Cube with The Borg from Star Trek! (Random tangent: The world record for the 3×3 Rubik’s Cube is 4.73 seconds by Australian cuber Feliks Zemdegs, in case you were wondering).

The silver lining is, many QA teams have already started to rethink what they need from a mobile testing lab/cloud.

According to the survey, mobile app testing strategies embrace the use of real devices and open-source integrations:

• 84% said real devices are “very important” or “crucial”
• 75% said open-source integrations are “valuable” to “extremely valuable”

This is the part where we tell you how awesome Kobiton is… How we deliver in all the areas above where legacy platforms fall short. How we help organizations test more mobile apps faster, and at 30% the cost of legacy platforms. And most importantly, how Kobiton empowers testers do their job like a bad-ass mo-fo (in a cape because… why not?!)

Hungry for more mobile testing statistics?

That was just a snack; soon you can get/share all survey stats in a pretty infographic. Keep an eye on our Resource Center or follow us on Twitter at KobitonMobile for the full report. In the meantime, let us know your experience… How is DevOps/mobile acceleration impacting your teams? Leave a comment. Please & thanks.