The Secrets to Blazing-Fast, Rock-Solid Mobile Acceptance Testing
Automated acceptance testing is an essential component of a healthy agile software development process. Unfortunately, attempts to adopt this approach in mobile often result in slow, brittle, and highly complex device tests, based on UI automation. This approach harms confidence in mobile development. Automation used in this way often creates more problems than it solves, leaving development teams and businesses wondering where it all went wrong—often blaming tools rather than their approach. Revisiting fundamentals via a simple example of a mobile app, Paul Stringer helps us re-discover the alternative approach to UI-based testing. We’ll see how the UI approach is flawed. And then we’ll refactor our tests to demonstrate how the majority of business logic can be tested via acceptance tests to be extensive, fast, and reliable. This approach shows not only how to reduce regression cycles from days to minutes but also how we can advance the architecture of mobile software. This improves confidence and allows teams to maintain sustainable progress in an environment of relentless updates and change.
Paul Stringer was given his first Mac in 1985—starting a lifelong obsession with technology and Macs. He’s programmed everything from hypercard to WebObjects, which he used in 2003 to develop one of the earliest mobile cloud services, Treasuremytext.com. Several million text messages later, these worlds collided with the launch of iPhone when he began building mobile applications for iOS. Paul has continued to work in the mobile industry in London for companies including Sky, Apple. Now head of mobile at Equal Experts, Paul is an advocate of clean code, SOLID principles, and acceptance- and test-driven development in pursuit of excellence in mobile software delivery. Find out more about Paul in his long-form writing, at Twitter @paulstringer, and directly at [email protected].