This document discusses testing mobile SDKs and provides tips to help maintain confidence as a QA engineer. It begins by defining an SDK and describing the speaker's product, which includes an SDK, developer dashboard, and microservices backend. The speaker then explains that initially there were no QA processes, many bugs found by clients, and testing just the SDK was not enough. Some helpful tools for mobile testing include automation tests, heuristics like the OODA loop, mnemonics like TAP IT UP, mind maps, and playing games at work. In conclusion, best practices can apply to different products, developers are important partners, and the most important thing is to just start testing.

1. How to test mobile SDK and do not
lose your self-confidence
Diana Pinchuk,
QA Engineer, GetSocial

2. Agenda
● What is mobile SDK?
● Testing SDK is trickier than it could appear
● Integration testing here is different from what you usually mean
● Helpful tools, heuristics and mnemonics
● Q&A

3. What is SDK?
A software development kit - a set of software development tools
that allows the creation of applications for a certain software
package, software framework, hardware platform, computer
system, video game console, operating system, or similar
development platform.

4. What is our product?
- SDK
- Developers Dashboard
- Microservices backend
Check https://www.getsocial.im/ for more details

5. Why I’m talking about losing self-confidence?

6. What did we start from?
- No QA processes
- Lots of bugs discovered by clients
- Testing only SDK is not enough, but you won’t test the whole
customer’s app games because it’s time-consuming
- Tricky third-party issues

7. Actually, it wasn’t so bad
- Devs did 5 releases and still alive (have clients and gain
money)
- Devs are concerned about quality a lot, that’s good
- TDD
- Fast and dedicated support

8. Threats for QA - Common mobile app problems
- Fragmentation hell
- Network-related problems
- Mobile architecture issues

9. Threats for QA - New difficulties
- Your testing is far from the “end” (finalized testing with
integrated app)
- Unexpected bugs in prod, we are shipping binary packages and
customers can take weeks to update to the recent version
- Your sense of beauty is not important
- Some types of testing are really not needed
- New major version is coming

10. Integration… is not that you were thinking about
- Game devs usually integrate their game with 14-16 SDKs
- Integration bugs on each particular game can be different
- Bugs differ according to platform (not only iOS/Android, but also
Unity, Cordova)

11. So? What to do with that?
- Autotests rule!
- Ask devs and other colleagues
- Plan properly and don’t forget about test design
- Remember about Pareto principle (and bug clusterization)
- Don’t be afraid to bring best testing practices
- Learn constantly

12. What can be helpful?
- RTFM (i.e. mobile testing books, blogs, chats etc.)
- Testing tools
- Heuristics
- Mnemonics
- Mind maps

13. Useful tools

14. Heuristics
OODA loop:
● Observe
● Orient
● Decide
● Act

15. Mnemonics - TAP IT UP
T: Tasks the user wants to complete with our app
A: Application composition and features
P: Platforms we will need to test
I: Inputs and Outputs, such as gestures, files, data feeds, or interacting with
external systems and other devices
T: Time and Timing and its effect on testing
U: Usage and typical user interaction
P: Places where the app is used

16. Testing tours

17. Play games at work!

18. Our biggest customers

19. What do we have now
- Autotests (hell, yeah), they really work!
- Close collaboration between devs and QAs
- Management understood the value of QA
- Lot of bugs before release => Hope to have less after the
release (BUT remember about “Absence-of-errors fallacy”)

20. Conclusions
You will test completely different products during your career.
Best test practices can be applicable to any of them.
Devs are your best friends.
Just do it!

21. References:
1. J.Kohl “Tap into mobile testing”
https://leanpub.com/testmobileapps
2. Heuristic Test Strategy Model by J.Bach
http://www.satisfice.com/tools/htsm.pdf
3. Adventures in QA blog http://adventuresinqa.com/
4. Very nice talk from Anna Karpenko
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXaFG01YRxQ
5. A bunch of useful testing mind maps
http://apps.testinsane.com/mindmaps

22. Thank you!
Questions?
pinchuk.diana@gmail.com
Skype: diana.pinchuk3