Webinar Recap: The New Testing Battlefields: Mobile, IoT and Beyond

“As digital becomes a priority and new technologies evolve, testers need to look past testing for only web and desktop..” The webinar discusses the scope of testing as it has grown rapidly with the introduction of mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) devices to automobile, home systems and other environments. This is pushing companies to find new effective and high quality testing tools for the multitude of devices operating in the various environments. This is not only limited to the software but also hardware in various fields including but not limited to smart home appliances, embedded systems in agriculture and mobile devices for the connected self. Testing has to move from desktops to the web. Usefulness of the Webinar for Business Practitioners The audience is made aware of the differences in the environments in regards to resources that are required for the tests and the risks associated with them include information security and system independence. The webinar discusses how testers can be able to develop and deliver quality software for these growing number of devices that are building the connected consumer. This can provide businesses with the edge in designs covering customer expectations pertaining to availability and speed, mobility capabilities and the various inputs (or none) required from them for the various interactions. The key testing points raised include; Testing of devices making up the smart home i.e. fridges, speakers and toasters Testing of automobile systems i.e. assisted driving or driver-less car systems Testing of devices for connected-self i.e. mobile devices and wearables The technical implications of all this for businesses include creation of API for the test tools; this is mostly dependent on the available test tools and data. The main challenge, however, will be to model the test system to cover the required scope based on the business cases developed by the interested organization as highlighted by Manyika, et al (2015) In summary, the growth of internet of things offers enormous potential with its growing plethora of devices and services which present interested businesses with a need to relook the testing of products and how they are to interact with the consumers. The presenters, however, didn’t mention issues relating to customer feedback as being part of the testing loop. This can add value to any testing process as it provide a continuous assessment of performance n IS as described by Agile feedback loops (Hendrickson, 2008). The key take away in my view is that businesses should design tests focused on the real-time, always available nature of IoT while securing user data. Reference Hendrickson, E., (2008) Agile Testing: Nine Principles and Six Concrete Practices for Testing on Agile Teams. Quality Tree Software, Inc. p7-8 Manyika, J. Chui, M., Bisson, P., Woetzel, J.,Dobbs, R., Bughin, J., & Aharon, D. (2015) The Internet of Things: Mapping the Value Beyond the Hype. McKinsey & Company, viewed 15 June 2016 https://www.mckinsey.de/sites/mck_files/files/unlocking_the_potential_of_the_internet_of_things_full_report.pdf