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Mobile Application Testing in Industrial Contexts: An Exploratory Multiple Case-Study

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Book cover Intelligent Software Methodologies, Tools and Techniques (SoMeT 2015)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 532))

Abstract

Recent empirical studies in the area of mobile application testing indicate the need for specific testing techniques and methods for mobile applications. This is due to mobile applications being significantly different than traditional web and desktop applications, particularly in terms of the physical constraints of mobile devices and the very different features of their operating systems. In this paper, we presented a multiple case-study involving four software development companies in the area of mobile and smartphones application. We aimed to identify testing techniques currently being applied by developers and challenges that they are facing. Our principle results are that many industrial teams seem to lack sufficient knowledge on how to test mobile applications, particularly in the areas of mobile application life-cycle conformance, context-awareness, and integration testing. We also found that there is no formal testing approach or methodology that can facilitate a development team to systematically test a critical mobile application.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Case study protocol and summary data is available at https://sites.google.com/site/casestudymobileapp/.

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Acknowledgment

This research was funded by the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia under FRGS research grant (FRGS14-125-0366). We would like to thank the team leader and developers in the four companies who have participated in our case study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, International Islamic University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

    Samer Zein & Norsaremah Salleh

  2. Centre for Computing and Engineering Software Systems, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia

    John Grundy

Authors
  1. Samer Zein
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  2. Norsaremah Salleh
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  3. John Grundy
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Samer Zein .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Iwate Prefectural University, Takizawa, Japan

    Hamido Fujita

  2. University of Naples "Federico II", Napoli, Italy

    Guido Guizzi

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Zein, S., Salleh, N., Grundy, J. (2015). Mobile Application Testing in Industrial Contexts: An Exploratory Multiple Case-Study. In: Fujita, H., Guizzi, G. (eds) Intelligent Software Methodologies, Tools and Techniques. SoMeT 2015. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 532. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22689-7_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22689-7_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-22688-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-22689-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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