CIO OPINION
As a real-world example of why you might want to inject chaos into mobile tests , imagine you ’ re a retailer and you provide your customers with a mobile app that they can use in your stores to help locate and research items on the shelves . If your app is prone to slow response rates when many clients are connecting from the same local area – as they would be if they ’ re shoppers concentrated in a store – you ’ ll want to know about that risk so that your developers can mitigate it ( which they might do by , for instance , writing logic that evenly distributes requests between concentrated sets of users ). Otherwise , your app won ’ t reliably deliver the experience you promise to customers , and you ’ ll probably lose revenue .
As a second example , consider a mobile network carrier who promises 5G connectivity to customers . Chaos testing can help a company like this to determine whether devices with low battery power will struggle to achieve connectivity at 5G levels , for example , and how interference from other devices could impact connectivity .
The list of examples could go on , but the point is simple enough : Any business that needs to know how defects in mobile devices or networks could impact the user experience should add chaos testing to its mobile testing strategy .
To make chaos testing a part of your mobile testing operations , you need a test environment that allows you to create chaos on demand .
You can ’ t do this effectively when testing on cloudbased mobile devices because you can ’ t simulate problems like Bluetooth interference in a device cloud . Instead , you ’ ll need to set up your own so-called isolation chamber , which is a physical space that hosts a set of mobile devices that are disconnected from outside infrastructure . There , you can fully control all aspects of the environment in order to test under whichever chaotic conditions matter to you .
The main reason why is simple : Your end-users are likely to encounter problems like poor network connectivity or erratic device behavior due to low battery power and running mobile tests under these conditions allows you to evaluate how your app will behave in a less-than-perfect environment . In turn , these tests can help developers identify ways to improve application performance under unusual conditions .
Not every mobile test needs to include chaos . Sometimes , you just want to perform compatibility tests to ensure that your apps work as expected across different devices , browsers and operating systems . Chaos testing is not helpful for that purpose .
But if you want to take your mobile testing strategy to the next level and ensure that you deliver an ideal user experience even under less-than-ideal conditions , a little chaos testing goes a long way . It provides insight into how mobile hardware and software interact in the real world , not just the close-to-perfect world of a standard mobile testing environment . p
46 INTELLIGENTCIO LATAM www . intelligentcio . com