Social Local Mobile (SoLoMo) application and challenges faced by Managers

In today's world there are lots of platforms available for mobile application development and also there are challenges with the different network operators. Device orientation is another factor which has to be well tested before developing every page in application. Different hardware and software combinations make is a bit hard to test the application. Unpredictable user inputs make is a challenge for the tester to do manual, integration, Unit testing. As the usages of the mobile applications are increasing, make a challenge for the performance testing of the application.

SoLoMo also known as 'Social Local Mobile is a new emerging trend for mobile devices. As the name suggests the technology is based on the location of the object and user generated reviews.  In today’s world we cannot deny that most of the people turn to smart devices to find a near-by store, restaurant etc. SoLoMo is just another upcoming facility which is much more powerful if used efficiently. These applications are widely being used in promotions and advertisements and testing them is a great challenge.

Today the use of mobile devices to access social media and business/e commerce sites is increasing at a very rapid pace. The hope of social is mobile and as the use of mobiles/smart phones is increasing, users are becoming more dependent on mobile apps. Companies launching the mobile apps for end customers want their application to be fully tested. But with wide variety of browsers and operating systems available in the market for the users it becomes very challenging for the QA to certify any application. To overcome such issues, need of mobile testing labs with all facilities is very important. SoLoMo apps are certainly going to be the future hence the testing of these applications is also going to be more challenging but yet interesting opportunity for the SQA firms.

Let’s analyses some of the challenges that we come across while testing such applications:

1) Variety of smart devices circulating in the market creates a lot of issues as performing compatibility testing on all the available devices in every cycle is next to impossible. To overcome this issue from a tester’s point of view we analyses the market share of the devices and distribute our testing accordingly.

2) Testing these applications  with intersection of other applications, e.g. if we are accessing any SoLoMo application and we have a phone call in between or a text message comes, then how does the application performs whether it resumes correctly or is   interrupted. The answer to this is Crowd-source testing.

Mobile Testing

Heard about Social Local Mobile (SoLoMo) Apps :

These are making the job of test manager a lot more interesting and challenging. Let us see the challenges and the way to handle them.

We are living in a smart phone era where people try to get in touch with the online sites almost daily. Such technology based devices has made lives of people more easy and at the same time interesting too. There are apps which deal with customer location basically termed as SoLoMo (Social Local Mobile) apps known for it's location-based services. It depends completely upon location of those customers who interact with these kind of apps. Adding location data lets organizations to optimize connections further, such as sending targeted offers to your customers' mobile devices. With so much critical and sensitive data flowing to smart phones and other mobile devices, there is a high need to ensure such SoLoMo apps are reliable, secure and usable. Testing of these apps is a great challenge for testers. Here are few listed challenges:

1) It is not possible to test every browser/OS/device combination in a single test cycle.

For this the best approach is to first find out the device-market share data based on which testing effort can be divided. After-wards prepare a matrix that optimizes such data appropriately.

2) System Integration is another challenge failure of which might lead to integration failure issues such as GPS failure,person moving into area with limited connectivity.

Standard testing measures are not sufficient for Social Local Mobile (SoLoMo) apps. So it’s a challenge for test managers to assure the quality of these mobile applications that are location-aware and interacting with social networks.

SoloMo applications require test managers to consider new kinds of failure and also consider non-functional testing and perform more beta-testing with users making it intresting and challenging.

Following are the ways to handle new challenges in testing Social Local Mobile applications.

Narrow the near-infinite set of devices.

It is difficult to figure out what devices to test, given that it's virtually impossible to test every possible device.

Present the customer with the points approach for SoLoMo apps.

Another approach can be to test deep with only a few devices, or do something in between. An useful strategy is to use market-share data to determine what to test on.

Pay attention to non-functional testing.

The choice of customer for investment on the test organization's scarce and expensive time is the key benefit.

For SoLoMo apps, consider crowd source testing

Linus's Law states, "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." In many cases, test and operations managers launch the application into production Friday night, get crowd sourced-tested all weekend, then decide Sunday night whether to pull the release or not -- before the business users get in.

Test for integration failures.

Systems integration is another challenge with SoLoMo apps. How do test managers make sure that a status update is propagated to Facebook, or the photo automatically goes to Twitter?