Mobile Regression Testing: A Guide

As applications grow and mature, teams must rely on consistent, continuous regression testing to ensure that a change in one part of the system does not break existing functionality elsewhere.

Software regression testing is important because while introducing new features or fixes into your application, you could be introducing more issues than you solved.

Mobile regression testing adds a whole new set of tests that are needed when building your regression testing suite. This blog will go into more detail regarding how to help you set up your mobile regression testing for success.

Key Considerations for Mobile Regression Testing

Automated regression testing has extended its scope beyond web regression testing. This is due to the complexity of the digital landscape, mobile devices, and how they are used.

Test on real devices right now in the Perfecto free trial.

Start Testing Now

These additional attributes are not limited to but include:

1. Which mobile devices are your end users using? 

Testers should think about the combination of devices and operating systems they need to test against to cover their core and then extended user base.

Smartphones and tablets have many different variations, which adds even more complexity to testing. In addition, testers should also plan and take into consideration devices and OSs that will be released within the next quarter or two.

Ask yourself:

• Which are the right devices to make sure you test against for your regression suite? 
• How can you ensure you stay up to date with the latest devices and OSs? 

Related Reading: Improve Your Mobile Testing Strategy With Perfecto’s Test Coverage Guide >
As a best practice, we recommend starting with your core use base and a small set of important stable tests. Then, you can build your regression suite from there.

Once your tests are stable with the core platforms, you can continue to extend your device coverage based on where your customers are based and your ability to endure risk. 

2. What are the top real end user conditions for your application? 

A good user experience doesn’t end with functionality. Rather, it ensures that performance is delightful and seamless as well.

To ensure you can provide the user experience your users expect, you will need to go beyond functionality and test to see how your application works in the wild, i.e. simulating what the user will be really experiencing when using your application.

Ask yourself:

• Which different network conditions, locations, SMS and phone call interruptions, apps running in the background, etc. should we test?
• What are the critical end user conditions that you need to recreate in your regression test? 

This has implications for your framework and how you build your tests, so planning and continuing to improve and iterate are a necessary part of the process to ensure continuous improvement.

3. What are the most critical end user journeys and advanced features in your application?

Use cases like biometric authentication, image and audio injection, two-factor authentication, multi-device authentication, and additional advanced functionalities require specific test cases. Including them assures that users can enjoy all the capabilities delivered bug free and on schedule.

Ask yourself:

• What are the required capabilities that you need to test against based on your critical application flows?
• What are the critical user flows you need to have in your regression suite? Are they automated?

4. Are we executing tests in parallel?

Being able to execute your tests in parallel is important in any type of regression test, and mobile regression testing is no exception.

Parallel testing enables scaling in the cloud to support tens of thousands of transactions per day. Enterprises that do this for their continuous testing, need this capability.

Ask yourself:

• How many tests do you need to run in parallel?
• How can you assure security and a seamless integration into corporate login systems? For example, is there SSO?
• What are your most suitable frameworks to use based on your developers, automation engineers and manual testers skill sets?
• What do you need in your test reporting to triage the failures from your regression testing suite?

Mobile Regression Testing Metrics

After answering these questions, it will be helpful for you to come up with some metrics to assist you in understanding how you are doing. Such metrics include answers to the following questions:

• What is your average test duration?
• How many test cases are in your regression pack?
• What are your most high value test cases?
• What is your percentage of failed tests?
• What is your mean time to detect a defect?
• What is your mean time to resolution (MTTR) for issues that arise?
• What is your build quality?

Automate Your Mobile Regression Testing With Perfecto

Perfecto provides a mobile regression testing platform with everything you will need to get started, with hundreds of real devices in Perfecto’s Smart Lab and integrations with all the major solutions making up your DevOps toolchain.

Get instant access to the Perfecto platform now, or learn more about the platform through an upcoming product demo.

See Plans & Pricing

Watch a Demo