Model-based Testing for a Family of Mobile Applications: Industrial Experiences

Testing is a fundamental verification activity to produce high-quality software. However, testing is a costly and complex activity. The success of software testing depends on the quality of test cases but finding a good set of test cases is laborious. To make matters worse, when dealing with a family of systems (e.g., variants of a mobile applications), test cases must assure that a diversity of configurations in potentially many variants work as expected. This is the case of hello again GmbH, a company that develops mobile applications for customer loyalty (e.g., discounts, free products, rewards, or insider perks). The company targets several business domains, and currently supports about 700 application variants. Testing such applications including all their variability is a cumbersome task. Even simple test cases designed for one variant most likely cannot be reused for other variants. To support developers at hello again GmbH, we present a solution to employ a model-based testing approach to their family of mobile apps. Model-based testing focuses on automatizing the design and generation of test cases. We present results of applying model-based testing on 27 applications from hello again GmbH and report the challenges and lessons learned for designing a variable test model. Our expected contribution is to support companies and practitioners looking for solutions to test families of software products.