Is Independent Testing Impacted by Increased Mobile App Development?
As a testing fraternity, it has taken us a long time to establish the status of independent testing. While we see the need for collaboration with the rest of the product team, we are taking a conscious step to ensure the independent testing status, which we have learned is not lost. While one side of the story stems from the DevOps style of development in the agile world, the other side of the coin here is from how popular mobile app development has become. Freelance developers are on the rise, taking of care the entire app development process end to end—from ideation to design to development to testing to release.
While this trend is exciting to see, the concern is whether such a rise in app development will adversely impact the positioning of independent testing. As we know, independent testing is a distinctive part of software testing taken on by a group of professionals who were not directly involved in developing the software. The goal of taking on independent testing is to ensure the tester does not succumb to any biases that he may have if he were involved in the actual development process. It is with this intent that the entities developing and testing the software are kept independent of each other. Even before we discuss the concern, a welcoming forecast is that independent testing is poised to grow slightly less than 10 percent annually until 2018.
When a freelance developer takes it all on his plate, even if he truly tests for an application, the concern is that the focus of independent testing is lost. Would he be able to do justice to testing the app across all scenarios or would he be biased to focus just on those areas that were of priority to him during development? This is the main question to answer, which will certainly have a strong say in whether freelance mobile app development will impact independent testing.
The numbers are definitely not very encouraging. One study says the average shelf life for an application is only thirty days. Why is this number so low? Are we setting the right precedence with such low-quality applications for the future ones to be built? This is a conscious effort that the app development community at large—including developers, app stores, and end users—should take on together to ensure the quality of applications developed over quantity.
A number of checklists are available that cover building successful apps and being a successful app developer. Independent testing should also be a part of these lists. A number of useful articles are available about overall mobile app testing strategy and automated mobile app testing strategies. App developers should account for these in overall development efforts and ensure the right freelance app development standards are defined for future generations while not losing the sanctity of independent testing.
