Testing for Android: When, Where, and How to Successfully Use Test Automation

*PLEASE NOTE: In order to address quite a bit of hesitation from members wanting to provide first and last name on this site, we are requesting that folks please sign up via Eventbrite. To confirm your seat to this meetup, please RSVP HERE (https://testing-for-android.eventbrite.com/)

*Please take a moment to review the Check-In Process (https://www.meetup.com/sfandroid/pages/Twitter_HQ_-_Meetup_Check-In_Process) at Twitter to ensure a smooth entry into the event.

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Finally: an event dedicated to the (often painful) subject of Android testing! We are extremely happy that Trent Peterson, co-president at AppThwack, offered to share his experience and thoughts on this topic.

In addition to Trent, we are fortunate to have Vandana Samala from Twitter's Mobile QA team, who promised to tell us a bit about how Twitter approaches Android Testing at scale.

Reliable, well-engineered test automation is often a mythical goal that developers agree is a good idea, but in reality don't have the time and resources to execute properly. Considering the number of apps on the market and the fickleness of customers (after 2 crashes 84% will go elsewhere (http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/12/users-have-low-tolerance-for-buggy-apps-only-16-will-try-a-failing-app-more-than-twice/)) testing is imperative just to stay relevant today.

Fortunately best practices, strategies, and tools are emerging to cope with this difficult topic, and our talk will break them down across the following topics:

1. Developing an Automation Strategy - When, what, and where to automate:

• We will dispel the myth that automation solves all QA issues and eliminates the need for manual testing and QA teams. Machines are great at testing mind-numbing repetitive tasks and humans are great at testing user experience, and when manual and automated tests are used in conjunction the outcome is a better app. We’ll cover how to identify what should be automated and what shouldn’t.

2. Automation Tools - An overview of different tools and types of automated tests available:

• Tool types include: Recorders, script based frameworks, and image based frameworks

• Types of tests include: UI (Performance), Device and Hardware Compatibility, Functional

• Pros and Cons of the testing frameworks available for Android

This talk is for Android developers and QA teams who are interested in learning more about automated testing on Android.

This event will be sponsored and hosted by Twitter.

About Trent Peterson

Trent spent seven years at Intel designing system-automation solutions trusted to test products used by millions of customers with an emphasis on simplicity and user experience. He is a co-founder of AppThwack, a mobile app-testing platform that has helped thousands of developers automatically test their apps on 100s of real devices in minutes, catching issues well before they’re released into the wild.

About Vandana Samala

Vandana is a Software Engineer in the Twitter Mobile Engineering team. Prior to joining Twitter, Vandana worked for 4 1/2 years at Microsoft on Windows Mobile both on Client and Services team. Before that she worked at Garmin for an year on their Personal Navigation Products.