January 2022 Summaries

This talk focused on scaling up the iOS UI tests using fastlane and its plugin, multiscan. The speaker addressed challenges such as running hundreds of UI tests in parallel, build time being affected, and flaky tests. They presented solutions like Xcode Parallel Test Execution, Firebase Test Lab, Flank, Bluepill, and introduced fastlane and its multiscan plugin to automate and run iOS UI tests in parallel. The talk aimed to help developers scale up their iOS UI tests efficiently, reducing test duration and improving overall app quality.

Neo Financial is a Canadian tech company that reimagines the way people spend, save, and earn rewards by offering a fee-free account with instant cashback, real-time notifications, and high-interest savings. The company's engineering team uses agile methodologies, CI/CD pipelines, and feature flags to ensure compliance with regulations, security, and rapid releases. Open Banking is expected to add significant value to mobile finance and banking, enabling customers to access their spending habits and financial data across various banks and lenders. To maintain a rapid release frequency, Neo Financial has adopted a two-week mobile release cycle, while prioritizing DevSecOps practices to ensure data security and compliance with high-security standards. The future of mobile finance and banking will focus on providing visibility and transparency, as well as education, to help users manage their personal finances effectively.

N26 is a digital bank that offers a convenient banking solution with no annual fees or maintenance charges, allowing over 7 million people to manage their money online and on-the-go. The company faces challenges in complying with industry regulations and keeping up with competitors while providing the latest features and functionalities to customers. To address these concerns, N26 has implemented agile methodologies such as trunk-based development, feature flags, and automated testing to ensure rapid release frequencies and maintain a secure product. Dama Damjanović, the engineering team leader at N26, believes that biometric security will add significant value to mobile finance and banking by providing both user experience and simplicity while reducing digital financial crime. She also emphasizes the importance of adapting agile methodologies to fit within the constraints and regulations of the finance and banking industry, which can actually support innovation and good engineering practices. In the future, Damjanović envisions a bright outlook for mobile finance and banking with more secure products and increased interconnectivity.

Software development is rapidly changing, especially in mobile development, where adding or revamping features and technologies is crucial for customer satisfaction. To ensure functionalities work as expected, testing has become a mandatory practice for all mobile developers. There are different types of testing, including unit testing, which tests individual components with single responsibilities, focusing on narrow and well-defined scopes. Unit testing benefits include reducing costs, providing documentation, reducing code complexity, bugs, and improving design. It's an essential practice that reduces defects and allows better refactoring of code. Mobile developers can implement unit tests for iOS, Android, and Flutter apps using their respective frameworks and tools, such as XCTest, Robolectric, and flutter_test. Good unit tests should run quickly, be fully automated, and not share states with each other. Test-driven development is a technique that writes test code first before implementing the actual code, resulting in a comprehensive suite of unit tests that provide feedback on software functionality. Running unit tests on Continuous Integration (CI) pipelines, such as Bitrise, helps ensure app quality and reduces defects.

In software development, testing is an essential part of the lifecycle and involves various types of testing such as unit testing, integration testing, UI testing, and more. To effectively test applications, it's crucial to have documentation and test reports that summarize all test activities and final test results. Test reports are a vital communication channel between the testing team and development teams or stakeholders, providing essential information to evaluate the quality of the tested product. The Bitrise Test Reports add-on allows users to generate test reports with just a few steps, including deploying tests to CI servers, displaying results in a single dashboard, and integrating with existing workflows. With this add-on, users can easily view test results for various types of tests such as Xcode tests, Android UI tests, Flutter tests, and more, making it easier to analyze build quality and make informed decisions about software releases.

The e-commerce industry is booming, and mobile technologies are changing the way we shop. E-commerce companies need mobile apps that provide enjoyable shopping experiences beyond a single purchase. However, most mobile teams face challenges in developing and releasing performant e-commerce apps, affecting productivity and customer satisfaction. Building a mobile app for an e-commerce store can attract new customers and increase revenue growth across all devices. The key to success lies in understanding the differences between native mobile apps, cross-platform apps, web apps, and implementing features such as personalized product recommendations, easy login & registration, fast loading speed, push notifications, advanced search options, wish list button, and secure in-app payments. Mobile DevOps is a set of processes, tools, and mindset that enables collaboration, shortens time-to-release, guarantees quality delivery, detects errors quickly, improves customer satisfaction, and increases employee engagement. Key capabilities to accelerate software delivery include implementing Continuous Integration (CI), trunk-based development process, test automation, shift-left on security, automating deployment, feature flags, mobile release train, cloud-based & mobile-focused CI/CD, and monitoring. By adopting these practices, e-commerce companies can improve their app performance, increase productivity, and provide better customer experiences.

Humans possess unique insights that computers cannot offer, making manual testing more suitable for tasks like usability tests, exploratory tests, and qualitative analysis. Manual testing is best suited for tests that require human intuition, such as user experience-related problems, while automated testing excels in repetitive or routine efforts, like regression tests and performance tests. A balanced approach that combines both automated and manual testing is recommended to maximize return on investment and achieve full product coverage. As an organization's stability increases, the feasibility of manual testing becomes unrealistic, and automation should be prioritized to save time and reduce errors. Larger teams can benefit from automating UI tests to support complex apps with multiple devices and operating system versions.

The marketplace for mobile apps has become increasingly crowded, prompting the emergence of "super apps" that aim to combine multiple functions into one convenient package, eliminating the need to download and maintain numerous different programs. Super apps have gained popularity in Asia, particularly in China and Southeast Asia, but their success model is yet to be replicated in Western markets. These super apps are becoming platforms or app stores, allowing third-party developers to build applications and publish them on the main platform, which holds a significant market share. The development of super apps poses unique engineering challenges, including managing complex codebases, ensuring data privacy, and planning for infrastructure, making it difficult for smaller companies to compete with FAANG and BAT. As Western companies attempt to replicate this trend, they will face significant economic incentives and profit potentials, but also intense competition and regulatory scrutiny.