Testing of a Multifunctional Mobile App for a Large Retail Company

Customer

The Customer is a large company engaged in selling foreign magazines and newspapers as well as books for children and adults nationwide.

Challenge

The Customer was developing a Tamagotchi app catering for children aged 3+. The app had more functions than a usual Tamagotchi (feeding a virtual animal, playing with it, shopping, etc.). It was integrated with the user’s calendar and alarm clock and gave reminders about important events, providing an opportunity to organize daily activities. The app had to work on a wide range of devices: iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, iPhone5s, iPad mini, Android 4.2 tablets (1280x720 and 1280x800) and Lenovo P780.

To ensure the mobile app’s success, the Customer needed comprehensive end-to-end testing, so they turned to ScienceSoft.

The project presented several challenges to the testing team:

• The Customer didn’t have documented requirements.
• The app had numerous features and the list was incomplete, as the app was still in pro.
• The deadlines were tight, as the Customer provided new builds daily and required bug reports within a day to ensure the stability of the release.

Solution

Following Agile methodology, ScienceSoft’s testing team performed:

• Exploratory testing to restore project requirements and draft a test suite for functional testing (105 test cases).
• Functional testing of every new feature the Customer added (42 test cases).
• Smoke testing to assure that with a new feature the app successfully started and performed its key functions.
• Integration testing to assure that the app successfully worked with a device calendar, timetable and alarm clock.
• Testing of in-game payments for games, clothes and household items for a virtual animal.

The testing team seamlessly integrated into the Customer’s project team and provided bug reports along with recommendations on improving the app on a daily basis. The testing team also performed bug verification when the Customer provided the list of fixed bugs.

Results

The Customer obtained a multi-functional mobile app working smoothly across different mobile platforms (iOS and Android) and providing positive user experience. The app stably ranks 4.5+ in Google Play Store. The Customer also got a test suite for functional testing (147 test cases).

Technologies and Tools

iOS 6 - 8.1, Android 4.2