Architecture or Design

The exploding apps economy has increased the businesses’ need to have a strong mobile app presence. This has spurred a dramatic upward shift in mobile app development. Traditionally, testing has been done in the lab, replicating user environments and usage scenarios. However, that approach can be insufficient. Complementing in-the-lab manual and automated testing with testing in real user environments is a critical new component of mobile app development.

You get paid for doing that? Is it possible to both work and have fun in a large corporate setting? Can joy be made part of the workplace? For the past few years Ryan Kleps and his colleagues have been conducting an informal social experiment using gamification (before they knew it had a name) in their corporate training modules to encourage participation, engagement, and enjoyment.

You can't read a technology article these days without some mention of "the cloud." Many have labeled it the next sea-change in the industry; others point out that the model has been around for ages. Regardless of its origins, the cloud certainly does change things. But the bigger question is: Does it really change things for you? The only way to answer that question is to understand the possibilities the cloud provides.

Although organizations spend a lot of time and money creating their applications, unfortunately they may not test them with a production-level user load. This often results in the application failing in production. The hardware cost to simulate thousands of concurrent users makes the organization think twice, so it tests with limited concurrent user volumes based on the available hardware.