An Interview with Mobile Testing Expert Karen N. Johnson
After a great three days at STPCon 2012 we’re happy to share a Testing the Limits interview with Karen N. Johnson, who was on stage discussing the Discipline Aspect of Testing. Karen is an independent software test consultant and a frequent speaker at software conferences, including STAREAST and STARWEST. She’s a contributing author to the book, Beautiful Testing; the co-founder of WREST; author of numerous articles; and blogs about her experiences with software testing. To learn more about Karen, check out her website or follow her on Twitter.
uTest: You’ve been in the testing/QA industry for a long time, but you’ve recently become very well-known as a mobile testing expert. First off, how did you get interested in mobile testing, and what do you like most about working in the space?
KNJ: Mobile testing captured my interest nearly three years ago. One reason was having a client with a need and a request for my help, and the second reason was that the mobile environment was the biggest technology change I’d experienced in awhile.
It is not mobile per se that captured my interest but the change—the chance to work on something new and to solve new problems. Being in the mobile space early on coupled with the fact that I am a writer, public speaker, and teach software testing including mobile testing, I quickly became seen as a mobile testing expert.
But I test in other areas and technologies as well. I’ve been in testing a long time. I’ve seen technologies come and go over the years. Currently, I don’t only work on mobile projects, and I wouldn’t want to be exclusively focused on mobile. It’s the variety that I’ve most enjoyed in my career so expect to see me continually change and evolve. For example, I’m also interested in data warehouse projects and working with remote testers and distributed agile teams.
uTest: As a testing consultant, what is the number one mobile testing challenge you are asked to help your clients with?
KNJ: The top questions I hear are: What devices should we test with? How do we acquire those devices? Can we use and trust emulators? Those are the most common questions. Those are challenging questions to resolve.
One solution that I recommend is to know your usage statistics. Planning based on statistics is a pragmatic way to pick and choose device coverage. That suggestion might sound improbable since not all companies have usage information yet. So my advice if you don’t have usage information yet is to follow the general market trends and plan coverage based on the market as a whole. Then fine-tune your coverage based on usage information as soon as you have that information.
The mobile market shifts but product usage doesn’t usually shift as rapidly. By focusing on what your specific users are actually using, you can narrow down the testing needs for operating systems, devices or mobile browsers.
Read Karen N. Johnson’s full Q&A on the uTest Software Testing Blog.
