Lack of Performance Testing Hits Apps – Again!

No this post is certainly not about the NFL penalty that is called when a player impedes an opponent who is attempting to catch a pass. Rather, the interference that caused yet another much-anticipated event to start with a gigantic fumble comes into picture. September 11^th, 2016 was what was supposed to be the start of a long season of Fantasy Football. Instead, both the ESPN mobile app, as well as its website, faced yet another outage situation.

In a recent press release, ESPN illustrated updates to its new app, which encompasses all the sports, including football. Talking of improved draft, live scoring features and personalized notifications tailored to users’ rosters as its major enhancements, the app failed to live to its expectations on the very first Sunday of the season.

Many Fantasy Football participants, including US Senator Claire McCaskill, wrote tweets ranging from witty one-liners to plain exhausted disappointment. ESPN stoically maintained that it has resolved the issue and that it would continue to monitor the website and the app. Fans, however, continued to scream murder. Few more examples of agitated tweets include:

• An image of a mobile phone being thrown at the wall in utter frustration,
• An image of Lorraine Warren (from The Conjuring) pleading ESPN for the scores, &
• An image of Cookie Monster (from Sesame Street) dully drumming its fingers on a table.

PERFORMANCE ENGINEERING

Other technological enterprises are generally empathetic when an event of this sort occurs, because technological glitches, and associated performance issues, are an IT enterprise’s worst nightmare. Performance testing has now evolved to performance engineering, which supports the idea that performance of a product or application must be monitored at all stages of the product life cycle. This is a cost-effective method that helps identify possible scenarios of failure and looks to fix those scenarios immediately with software testing. Poor performance not only hits the profitability factor of an enterprise, it also damages its relationships with its customers. Losing customers to hawk-eyed competitors is often as bad as it can get. It then takes a serious folly on the competitor’s part, or a revolutionary transformation of the enterprise in question, to gain its position back on the podium.

[Tweet “#Performance Engineering assures that a product or application is monitored at all stages of the #product life-cycle.”]

Apart from identifying areas where the application has broken down, the capability to foresee and advise the areas at which the application undergoing testing is prone to crashing, is the most intricate characteristic of Predictive Performance Engineering. Load testing and stress testing must never be overlooked, especially in the category of mobile phones. Various tasks are performed by users, ranging from downloading the application, to reconfiguring it after an instalment update. As these tasks vary in volume and function, it becomes imperative that testing has been done in order to ensure that the application does not succumb under the traffic of users or simultaneous variance in functionality.

The shift-left engineering approach is the collaborative effort of quality assurance professionals, developers, and stakeholders. They ensure that the focus is on ensuring that at every stage, quality is guaranteed and that the defects are fixed as they occur.

DIGITAL BUSINESSES

Digitization holds different meaning for different businesses. As exclusive mobile applications are launched from each industry, the way the mobile app is used differs (tweets may be sent hourly, but air tickets are booked only after a considerable gap in the number of days, in most cases). A robust Digital Assurance platform comprises of services encompassing the entire digital value chain. Mobile applications provide a direct interface for interaction of the enterprises to their customers. Customer experience matters for further development of the business. Constant feedback ensures that the product being designed is as close to customer need as possible.

[Tweet “#DigitalAssurance is vital as exclusive mobile apps are launched from each industry and the way the #mobileapp is used differs.”]

IN CONCLUSION

Frameworks have been designed after extensive research at Cigniti Technologies. It offers an array of performance engineering solutions that are designed to meet your needs at any stage of the software development lifecycle. Cigniti also comprises of a comprehensive mobile application testing strategy. With such features, Cigniti ensures that applications hit the market on time and with lesser cost, and assures that quality is guaranteed.

Cigniti has built a dedicated Performance Testing Center of Excellence to generate performance testing value creators. Performance testing consultants at Cigniti understand software architecture, systems, and corresponding networks.