Tricentis has added the ability to test native iOS and Android applications to its Testim software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform.
Previously, the Testim platform was designed to test web applications, but is now being extended as organizations build and deploy more native mobile applications. Capabilities of the Testim Mobile platform include codeless authoring of mobile tests to eliminate the need to write and maintain Appium, Espresso or XCUITest scripts and the ability to set up, configure and manage mobile devices in minutes using the Tricentis Mobile Agent.
Additionally, applications can be uploaded to the cloud to enable collaboration across testing teams as they opt to run tests on real or virtual devices. DevOps team can also customize tests with JavaScript, branch tests, and run tests from a scheduler or continuous integration (CI) build.
Tricentis CTO Mav Turner said Tricentis is moving to implement a consistent set of mobile testing services across its entire portfolio of testing platforms now that mobile applications are equal, first-class citizens alongside web applications. The primary driver of that shift has been the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw more organizations relying on external-facing mobile applications to engage customers, partners and employees working remotely, he added.
Testing those applications is more critical than ever because the cost of failure—in terms of impact to the business—is now much higher as more organizations depend on software to drive business processes, noted Turner.
The goal is to make it simpler to test these applications as they are being developed to ensure quality, he added. The challenge is that many developers don’t have a software engineering mindset. Hence, they need to rely more on testing platforms infused with artificial intelligence to discover issues relating to, for example, scalability and security, said Turner.
Most organizations are trying to shift more responsibility for testing toward developers as part of an effort to remediate issues earlier in the software development life cycle. It’s more challenging for developers to remediate issues after an application has been developed simply because they have lost context. Testing platforms infused with AI capabilities make it easier for developers to identify issues at the time they are writing code. In the future, Tricentis expects to take advantage of generative AI platforms to make it easier to author tests using a set of best practices that can be easily reused, noted Turner.
That approach doesn’t necessarily eliminate the need for a dedicated quality assessment review, but it does allow testing teams to focus more of their time and effort on testing the application experience versus identifying lower-level errors that many developers routinely make.
Over time, the quality of applications should steadily improve as many of the low-level mistakes that developers make are eliminated. That should improve everything from application security to the user experience as applications are continuously updated. In the meantime, organizations that embed testing within DevOps workflows are steadily reducing the number of issues that need to be addressed just before applications are supposed to be deployed.
