Introduction:

The 2nd of November brought to light some of the major product enhancements we are working on. The Webinar on “Building A Unified Testing Ecosystem in a Fragmented Testing World” shed light on some of the thinking behind where we are headed to understand and explore the future of app testing. Here are some of the Key Takeaways from the webinar.

Avinash Tiwari, Co-founder, pCloudy started out his talk with the famous saying “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” He went on to highlight the importance of the unification of various cities that made Rome what it is during its prime. He also highlighted how this unification took time and wasn’t an idea that just popped up one fine day. He breaks down his webinar by explaining 3 concepts that are disjointed and separate by themselves but goes on to bring in some coherence in their unification.

1st Concept – New App Ecosystem
The first concept helps us get an insight into the complex user journeys that have entered the digital landscape. As we go through the webinar, we understand the importance of Apps in this whole evolution of user journeys in the digital world. During the webinar a Gartner report was highlighted to show the importance of a new integrated approach that some retail banking firms have adopted to cater to these complex user journeys. We learn about the complexity of the user journeys as we take a deep dive into the example of the furniture retail giant, Ikea. We learn that Ikea customers are constantly interacting with the business through different mediums and interaction hubs and that most of these user journeys start on the phone, where buying any product is just an idea or a dream until they visit a store, check out the product’s brochure and explore the pricing on the website, etc.

complexity of customer journey
The 1st concept clearly explains the importance of how a user journey is intertwined and integrated with different mediums of interactions. So much so that our approach to serving the customer must take a new integrated approach too.

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And this integrated approach must be one that paves the way for a new app ecosystem where multiple touchpoints are integrated with each other. Mobile apps are still a primary interface, where most of the interaction takes place, and with the right analysis of the usage we can create personalized experiences that are taken from the customer based operating model.

2nd Concept - Testing Landscape - Fragmented tool chains
The 2nd concept is already a known fact in the testing world where the use of multiple tools and frameworks for performing various app testing tasks is a common dilemma. This 2nd concept highlights the confusion among various testing communities that use multiple testing tools and frameworks for their specific app testing needs.

While using various tools for specific app testing functionalities makes a ton of sense, fragmentation becomes a challenge. And hence the need for a unification of these fragmented toolchain becomes vital. The idea of a unified tool has its own considerations that need to be given importance by organizations and testing experts when starting to explore tools that are not so fragmented. Some of them include –

Should you consider a tool that does everything or specific tools for specific needs?
Should you consider no-code/low-code or coded tools?
Should you consider offline tools that need to be installed on a local machine or should you go for a cloud-based application, and more.
Answering these questions will help Testers and QA heads to make sense of the decision to choose tools wisely. With these questions, considerations and thoughts in mind, we move on to the 3rd Concept of Test Observability.

3rd Concept - Test Observability
We start to understand Test Observability as the ability to collect, measure, and analyze data from various testing artifacts to gain insights into the health and performance of a system or an application(s). In short, we understand that Test Observability is a concept that makes the unknown known. It is important to note that there are various testing artifacts and data that we encounter when performing different types of testing. However, there is hardly any room to make sense of this data without the test observability layer.

The need to gather the testing insights from various modules of test creation, test execution and infrastructure to bring it under the test management umbrella and add the layer of observability to make sense of how an app performs. This new insight will help us resolve bugs much easier and quicker.

Bringing the 3 Concepts together – The Unification
Understanding these 3 concepts in detail and bringing them together gives us a platform with new possibilities. The need for a new Unified Testing Ecosystem that simplifies the complex app ecosystems, using a minimal number of tools that work together with the power of test observability to enhance the overall testing experience become vital to move forward toward test excellence.

This new unified testing platform will help organizations to go from test status updates to test excellence. Avinash sheds light on how the new unified test ecosystem decentralizes decision making to ensure faster resolutions and quicker releases. He goes on to highlight that the future of app testing is no longer fragmented but unified to take quick decisions, access testing insight in a single place and create an environment that is truly agile. pCloudy is moving in this direction as a product and here is a first look at what this new Unified Testing Ecosystem might look like.

Conclusion
The future of app testing is no longer that of fragmentation but of unification. The faster various testing communities adopt this mindset, the faster the world will move towards test excellence. We can’t wait to launch the Unified Test Ecosystem to the world soon and expect a resounding acceptance to accelerate app testing and take it to the next level.