Everyone is talking about mobile testing these days. Testers are focused on the vast and growing number of devices and how to do testing right in this fast-changing technology. Take a deep dive into functional testing for mobile devices with Karen Johnson, who has worked with multiple clients in mobile testing for the past two years. Karen reviews test considerations for search, currency, multi-lingual settings, and more. In addition, she explores special user interface considerations for mobile devices-custom controls, links, video, and site maps-and discusses testing passwords, download settings, app permissions, and other security concerns that often are overlooked. Learn what you need to know to start testing in the mobile environment as Karen shares her experiences and gets you on the road for mobile testing.

Even though acceptance testing principles and tools are common today, teams often stumble during implementation. In the worst cases, acceptance tests start to feel like a burden rather than a boon. Paul Nelson guides you through common acceptance testing pitfalls and provides practical, “tested” solutions to keep your acceptance testing efforts on track. Starting with a typical example, Paul guides you through important principles that focus on collaboration with the business-getting the words right, managing the level of detail, dependency isolation, and refactoring in safe steps. Paul explores common abstraction patterns and demonstrates examples using Cucumber, though the principles are equally applicable with other tools. Leave with a renewed confidence in your ability to maintain control of your acceptance tests and make them the collaboration tool they should be.

Global markets, quick time to market, and a feature-rich design are major drivers in determining many products’ success. Product companies and businesses with customer-facing systems are constantly on the lookout for innovative development and testing techniques to control these driving forces. One such software testing technique gaining popularity is crowdsourced testing. With its scale, flexibility, cost effectiveness, and fast turnaround, crowdsourcing brings new solutions to many testing problems. Is it a perfect solution for all product companies to leverage? Not necessarily. Rajini Padmanaban describes the best practices in implementing a crowdsourced test effort. She discusses whether or not crowdsourcing makes sense for a given product; what, when, and how to crowdsource; what risks exist; and how to mitigate the risks.

Through his quality practices, Edwards Deming transformed Japanese industry in the 1950s and later American industry, proving that building quality intrinsically into a product dramatically lowers costs. Although agile development brings the software industry into closer alignment with Deming, we often continue to rely on end-of-process inspection and rework to ensure quality. A fresh look at Deming’s principles will help testers make a powerful impact on the success of the software projects and the organization. Mark Strange reviews how agile testing differs from traditional software testing, explores what test teams should be measuring (more than defect counts), and shares statistical techniques to help identify problems and bottlenecks in your testing process.