Ask HN: Do you do QA before releasing a mobile app?

5 points by tetek ↗ HN
If so:

1. Is there a special employee to do that?

2. What software is being involved?

3. How do you structure the tests? [checklist | scenario descriptions | other (what?)]

4. How do you give feedback to devs? (reports?)

5. When is the QA being done? [before beta dist | before public release]

6. Is it helpful?

7. Are you happy with your workflow? Any comments how to improve?

thanks!

1 comment

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Yes, but who does it depends on if my project is professional or personal.

1. Pro: Yes, we have a QA team; Per: No, but I have a few friends (some are Pro QA) I can have test the app for me.

2. Pro: Telerik or Xamarin Cloud Platform; Per: Nothing, running the app while screen recording on their mac (I mostly do iOS dev).

3. Pro: The QA team works with the BA to go over the requirements and develop positive and negative test cases; Per: I tell them what the app does and how it should work. They then bang on it until it either explodes or works.

4. Pro: Team Foundation Services - Create a bug and add it to the backlog; Per: Email and Spreadsheet, then I log into my TFS Online account and add it.

5. Pro: We have 3 levels of testing. Integration (where the devs/ci live), QA (after code-freeze on the current sprint), UAT (business approves the app) and then if all of those check off we launch to the public (usually internal MDM deployment); Per: I have everyone test it before public release.

6. Probably the most important part of developing professional grade software. Which if you are releasing a mobile app, no matter if its a personal app or enterprise, it should be close to perfect!

7. Yes, but the key to any workflow is it has to be adaptable. Pro: We recently had a 2 week deadline from conception to market for a mobile app that integrated with a number of our cloud-hosted back office accounting applications, and with that tightened deadline, QA and UAT were combined and all testing was done by the CIO (who the project was for).