With new mobile applications for Blackberry, iPhone, and Android battling for media attention and consumer dollars, the pressure to get applications built, tested, and launched has never been greater. Getting high-quality apps to market quickly can make or break a product or company. However, the testing methods that work for Web and desktop apps (e.g., in-house QA, outsourcing, emulators/simulators, and beta testers) do not meet the extreme testing needs of mobile apps. Companies must test across many handset makers and models, wireless carriers, operating systems, browsers, and locations. This calls for a new approach-crowdsourcing. Doron Reuveni provides insight into the growing trend of crowdsourced testing for mobile applications and addresses both the benefits and challenges of this new testing model.

Your company is ready to launch its new product. How will it perform under real-world conditions? Will it meet the needs and expectations of the users? Will it operate on all the platforms and configurations for which it was designed? With the future of the product, your company, and perhaps your job depending on the answers, beta testing is a great way to maximize your chances of success. Beta testing provides empirical metrics that prove or disprove that your product will meet clients’ expectations, providing you with input for necessary course corrections in the product. Rob Swoboda explains the process of beta testing as well as the key concepts needed to plan, execute, and evaluate a successful beta testing effort. Rob shares his insights into the practices he employs to design and manage high-priority beta test efforts and offers you the keys to succeed in your own beta test program.

Is your organization releasing applications that target multiple mobile devices, platforms, or browsers? If so, you have faced-or soon will face-the challenge of choosing and setting up a test environment for these devices and platforms. Nat Couture shows how to develop a cost-effective application test environment to mitigate the risks associated with deploying mobile applications. He shares his latest research on mobile devices, mobile platforms, and mobile browser usage, and explains in detail what you need to consider when choosing a test environment. Learn how to select a winning combination of device-specific simulation, platform-specific simulation, and browser-specific simulation-coupled with tests on the actual devices. Build a mobile device testing program that reduces cost, increases coverage, and helps achieve the level of confidence you need to release mobile applications into production.

Growing application complexity, coupled with the exploding increase in application surface area, has resulted in new quality challenges for testers. Some test teams are adopting a tour-based testing methodology because it’s incredibly good at breaking down testing into manageable chunks. However, hackers are paying close attention to systems and developing new targeted attacks to stay one step ahead. Rafal Los takes you inside the hacker’s world, identifying the landmarks hackers target within applications and showing you how to identify the defects they seek out. Learn what “landmarks” are, how to identify them from functional specifications, and how to tailor negative testing strategies to different landmark categories.