5 Common Mobile Automation Testing Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

Mobile applications have become a cornerstone of everyday life, providing users with instant access to information, services, and entertainment. It is more important than ever to ensure the quality and dependability of apps through rigorous testing, as the demand for smooth and high-performing apps is growing. To satisfy these needs, mobile automated testing has become essential, allowing for quicker release cycles, better test coverage, and reliable outcomes. Mobile automated testing can present some difficulties, despite all its benefits.

Avoiding 5 Common Mobile Automation Testing Pitfalls

Inadequate Test Coverage
Ignoring Platform-Specific Testing
Flaky Tests
Overlooking Performance Testing
Neglecting Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment

Conclusion
People Also Ask

In this blog post, we'll look at five common mistakes that teams make when doing mobile automated testing. These mistakes could jeopardize the caliber of your applications and reduce the efficacy of your testing efforts. More significantly, we will offer helpful guidance on how to steer clear of these errors, enabling you to streamline your testing procedures and give your users the best possible mobile experiences.

Mastering the strategies for avoiding common pitfalls in mobile application testing will elevate the quality and reliability of your mobile apps, ensuring they meet the highest standards of performance and user satisfaction. So, without any further ado, let's get started!

Avoiding 5 Common Mobile Automation Testing Pitfalls

To assure the functionality and quality of applications, you need to perform mobile automated testing. But it has its own unique set of challenges. Here are five typical mistakes made while automating mobile testing, along with helpful tips for avoiding them:

5 Common Mobile Automation Testing Pitfalls

Inadequate Test Coverage

Pitfall:

One of the common pitfalls in mobile automation testing is inadequate test coverage. This occurs when testing efforts primarily focus on automating basic or happy path scenarios while neglecting to test edge cases, error conditions, and less frequently used features. As a result, critical bugs and usability issues may remain undetected until they surface in production or during real-world usage.

Causes of Inadequate Test Coverage:

Several factors contribute to inadequate test coverage in mobile automation testing:

Time Constraints: Pressure to meet tight deadlines may result in prioritizing only essential scenarios.
Limited Test Scenarios: Lack of comprehensive test planning and understanding of user behavior can lead to overlooking critical test scenarios.
Focus on Happy Paths: Over-reliance on automating simple cases that follow expected user flows.

How to Avoid:

The following methods should be included in mobile automated techniques to address the issue of insufficient coverage:

Thorough Test Planning: Give time to create a thorough test plan that encompasses a variety of test scenarios that address various user journeys, error scenarios, and edge cases.
Risk-Based Testing: Focus on crucial features and high-risk regions, ranking test scenarios according to their possible impact and chance of failure.
Exploratory Testing: To find unforeseen problems and confirm the app's functionality under different circumstances, combine automated testing with exploratory testing.
Frequent Test Reviews: Examine test coverage frequently to find any gaps and places that need further testing.

Ignoring Platform-Specific Testing

Pitfall:

Not focusing on platform-specific testing is a typical mistake in mobile app testing. Different operating systems (OS) and device models might cause mobile applications to behave and perform differently. Platform-specific testing is important since skipping it can lead to problems with compatibility, inconsistencies in functionality, and, eventually, poor user experiences on some devices.

Causes of Ignoring Platform-Specific Testing:

Platform-specific testing is often neglected in the development of mobile apps for several reasons:

Time and Resource Constraints: Prioritizing testing efforts on main platforms or devices may result from time constraints or resource availability.
Assumption of Uniform Behavior: Developers may assume that the app will perform uniformly across all platforms without validating this through testing.
Lack of Device Diversity: Variations in user environments may be overlooked in testing, which is restricted to a group of devices or OS versions.

How to Avoid:

Device and OS Coverage: To guarantee thorough coverage, increase the variety of devices and OS versions present in settings.
Use of Emulators and Real Devices: To simulate a variety of user environments during testing, make use of both emulators/simulators and real devices.
Feedback and Continuous Monitoring: Implement ongoing monitoring procedures to spot platform-specific problems after releases and get user input for enhancements.
Platform-Specific Test Plans: Develop plans that specifically target platform variations, focusing on functionality, UI/UX, and performance aspects.

Flaky Tests

Pitfall:

In mobile automated testing, flaky tests are a typical problem where some test cases behave inconsistently, passing or failing randomly without requiring changes to the applications or the underlying code. Inaccurate test results can undermine trust in the test suite, resulting in lost time analyzing false positives and negatives and making it more difficult to spot actual flaws.

Causes of Flaky Tests:

A number of elements included in mobile app testing environments can lead to faulty tests, including:

Timing Problems: Variable execution timings can cause tests that rely on timing conditions (such as network lag or animation finish) to occasionally fail.
External Dependencies: Changes in service behavior or problems with network access may cause tests that depend on external services or APIs to fail.
UI Changes: Layout or rendering changes might cause tests involving UI elements to fail, particularly when testing on several devices or OS versions.

How to Avoid:

Test Stabilization: Determine and address the underlying causes of unstable tests, such as scheduling problems, reliance on outside services, or dynamic content.
Use Explicit Waits: To make sure the scripts wait for certain circumstances before continuing, use explicit waits rather than implicit ones.
Isolate Tests: Design tests to be independent of each other, so that the execution of one test does not affect others.

Overlooking Performance Testing

Failure to conduct performance testing is frequently made mistake in the development of mobile apps. This happens when development teams overlook this type of testing which evaluates how effectively the app functions under varied load and stress levels. And in favor of functional testing, it verifies the accuracy of app features. Applications that are not performance tested may work well but become slow, have response problems, or even crash when exposed to real-world usage scenarios and user loads.

Causes of Overlooking Performance Testing:

This type of testing is often overlooked in the creation of mobile apps for several reasons:

Limitations on Time and Resources: Performance testing may take a backseat because of constrained project timeframes or resource availability.
Low Priority Perception: Development teams may undervalue performance testing because they believe that ensuring functional correctness is enough to guarantee the quality of their apps.
Lack of Performance Testing Expertise: Teams may be discouraged from integrating performance testing approaches and technologies into their testing strategy if they lack sufficient knowledge or experience with them.

How to Avoid:

Incorporate Performance Testing: Instead of seeing performance testing as an afterthought, incorporate it into the development process from the beginning.
Define Performance Metrics: To scale and assess app performance, clearly define performance measurements and criteria (such as response time, throughput, and resource usage).
Use Realistic Test Scenarios: To find performance bottlenecks, create realistic load and stress test scenarios that mimic predicted usage patterns and scale.
Use Performance Testing Tools: Use performance testing frameworks and tools (such as JMeter, Gatling, and LoadRunner) to automate tests and efficiently analyze the outcomes.
Continuous Monitoring: To identify and fix performance problems as soon as they arise, use continuous performance monitoring in your production environment.

Neglecting Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment

Not implementing CI/CD procedures is a typical mistake in the development of mobile apps. When manual testing procedures are the only ones employed, bottlenecks may form, the development cycle may lag, and new features or bug patches may not be released on time. The advantages of automated testing, where timely and dependable delivery of high-quality software is crucial, are lost when CI/CD is not integrated.

Causes of neglecting CI/CD Procedures:

The following elements play a part in the disregard for CI/CD practices in mobile app development:

Lack of Understanding: Development teams may be unaware of the advantages of CI/CD or how manual testing affects development time.
Resource Constraints: Adoption of this approaches may be hampered by a lack of resources (e.g., money, infrastructure, and experience).
Resistance to Change: The deployment of this pipelines may be hampered by organizational opposition to implementing new techniques and technology.

How to Avoid:

Automate Testing Procedures: Include automated testing in continuous integration/continuous development pipelines to check changes fast and reliably, guaranteeing ongoing feedback and early defect identification.
Adopt Continuous Integration: To find and fix problems early in the development lifecycle, automate the build, test, and integration processes.
Accept Ongoing Deployment: Facilitate the release process by automating the deployment of verified modifications to live environments, minimizing the need for human participation.
Make Use of CI/CD Platforms and Tools: Use CI/CD platforms and tools (such as CircleCI, Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, and others) to build reliable pipelines for automated deployment, integration, and testing.
Foster a DevOps Environment: Encourage cooperation and dialogue amongst the teams working on development, testing, and operations to support continuous improvement and integrate such processes into the culture of the company.

Conclusion

Understanding and addressing common mobile testing pitfalls is crucial for delivering robust, high-quality mobile applications. By proactively identifying and mitigating these challenges, development teams can optimize their mobile testing strategy and enhance the overall reliability and performance of their apps.

At PixelQA, we offer comprehensive automation testing services to help businesses navigate these challenges and achieve their quality assurance goals. Our team, implement mobile automation testing best practices, optimize testing strategies, accelerate time-to-market, and deliver exceptional experiences to their users.

Don't let common pitfalls hinder the success of your mobile app. Contact us today to learn how our automation testing services can elevate the quality and performance of your mobile applications.

5 Common Mobile Automation Testing Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

Table of Contents

Avoiding 5 Common Mobile Automation Testing Pitfalls

Inadequate Test Coverage

Ignoring Platform-Specific Testing

Flaky Tests

Overlooking Performance Testing

Neglecting Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment

Conclusion

People Also Ask

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