Software Developer

To create better test cases, Koray Yitmen says you must know your users. And the path to better test case creation in usability testing starts with the segmentation and definition of users, a concept known as personas. Contrary to common market-wise segmentation that focuses on users' demographic information, personas focus on users’ behavioral characteristics, animating them in the minds of designers, developers, and testers. Put these personas “on stage” and let them play their roles in user scenarios.

Many cloud-based performance and load testing tools claim to offer “cost-effective, flexible, pay-as-you-go pricing.” However, the reality is often neither cost-effective nor flexible. With many vendors, you will be charged whether or not you use the time (not cost effective), and you must pre-schedule test time (not always when you want and not always flexible). In addition, many roadblocks are thrown up—from locked-down environments that make it impossible to load test anything other than straight-forward applications, to firewall, security, and IP spoofing issues.

In today’s competitive world, more and more HTML5 applications are being developed for mobile and desktop platforms. Spotify has partnered with world-renowned organizations to create high quality apps to enrich the user experience. Testing a single application within a few months can be a challenge. But it's a totally different beast to test multiple world-class music discovery apps every week. Alexander Andelkovic shares insights into the challenges they face coordinating all aspects of app testing to meet their stringent testing requirements.

During the past ten years, static analysis tools have become a vital part of software development for many organizations. However, the question arises, “Can we quantify the benefits of static analysis?” William Oliver presents the results of a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory study that first measured the cost of finding software defects using formal testing on a system without static analysis; then, they integrated a static analysis tool into the process and, over a period of time, recalculated the cost of finding software defects.

Few topics are hotter these days than mobile software development. It seems that every company is rushing to release its own mobile application. However, when it comes time to build that software, companies quickly discover that things are different now. Many developers claim that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to test drive an application. Traditional testing tools are unable to automate the application in the emulator or on the device so testers usually are left with a manual testing approach.