Getting team buy-in for automated mobile testing

Getting team buy-in is notoriously difficult. Even when change is absolutely necessary, it’s tough to get people to care enough to support it.

Why?

Because of habits. Because of comfort. Because of complacency.

But managers can’t blame their team for the lack of change. It’s their job to get their team members excited enough to support their ideas and their vision. And mobile teams are no different from other teams.

So how do you do it? How do you get your team excited about change?

Let’s take a look at what you can do to get your team pumped about automated QA and testing.

First, what are the challenges of getting team buy-in?

The challenges of getting team buy-in

Getting team buy-in is no easy task. Because it’s not about tasks and processes at the end of the day–it’s about changing and creating a mentality that allows for great things to happen collectively.

Let’s take a closer look at the challenges.

1. Change is not a priority

Change is not a priority for mobile teams – shipping is. But when the goal of your app is to deliver the best possible user experience, shouldn’t an optimized testing process that can ensure the highest possible quality come first? There’s nothing that says that you can’t find a balance between deployment speed and product quality.

In order to get the team excited about change, you’ll need a vision.

2. There’s no vision

Every good leader has a clear vision. Because you can’t get your team excited about change if there’s no vision. A vision exists to align your team. A vision communicates what they are working toward and why. If there’s no vision, it’ll be very difficult to get your team members excited about what they’re doing and where you’re going. If your team is fully onboard with the vision, getting team buy in is much easier, because they will understand where it fits into the roadmap.

3. Lack of leadership

Leadership is about actively living the vision every day, because team buy-in has to be preached from the top-down. Managers need to create clarity, and above all – dialogue. They must communicate that the goal of change is to create less work, not more. If this doesn’t exist, getting team buy-in will be very difficult.

4. Lack of structure

Mobile testing requires investment. It takes time to plan and run tests. If your mobile QA team doesn’t have the structure to support and welcome change, then it will be very difficult to get team buy-in. Because if the structure doesn’t allow for change to begin with, you’re only creating more work for your team members.

5 steps to transitioning to automated mobile QA

Manual testing is a good fit for agile environments, where time is very limited. But as the mobile app is being developed, features and functionality code changes. Because of that automated test scripts have to be constantly reworked. This is very time consuming.

Here are five key steps that will make your transition to an automated QA process much easier.

1. Start small

Start with small test cases when your team is new to automated testing. Small test cases are easy to automate, debug, maintain and reuse. Take the cases you frequently test manually, perhaps a quick login test case? By not going too big and too complex too soon, you increase your chances of making the transition smooth.

2. Choose the right tools

Using the right tools is key to making it easier for your team to transition to automated testing. Make sure to evaluate tools available with your team and choose the tools that work for you. There are many tools to choose from, and the selection process can be pretty daunting.

Modern automation tools should have the following characteristics:

• Cloud-based devices and configurations
• Controlled, customizable, and repeatable tests
• Centralized testing history and data logs
• Real-time interaction and live debugging
• Visual test reports and advanced analytics

3. Anticipate obstacles

Knowing what’s stopping your team from transitioning to automated testing is a key part of the process. Often, people are concerned about added complexity. What will the learning curve look like? Will they have to spend a lot of time learning new tools? New frameworks? New programming? That’s why starting small and choosing the right tools for their testing needs is key.

4. Prioritize what to automate

Don’t go overboard with automation because it’s new and exciting. Carefully choose what and when to automate. As mentioned, it’s impossible to automated everything. We recommend running a risk analysis to help determine parts of your application that should be automated.

5. Make it a team sport

A collaborative team will make for a more successful outcome. And automated testing is no different. Your automated tests have to live in a single repository and be accessible at all times. The automation tools you choose have to allow for seamless team collaboration and facilitate the process of categorizing, tagging, sorting and filtering your automated tests.

Final thoughts

We know that every single step of the process can’t – and shouldn’t – be automated. Because when it comes to functionality and first impressions, there’s no substitute for manual testing. But automated mobile testing can accelerate and optimize your testing cycle. Ultimately, it will remove the mundane repetitiveness and error-prone results of manual testing.

Transition will not happen overnight. It never does. But starting small, getting your team excited, and never losing sight of the vision will help your mobile QA team stay the course.

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