In a rapidly changing mobility sector, fleet management platforms and associated mobile apps for car sharing play an important role. They play a key role in how we get around and how we manage vehicle resources. It is therefore essential that these software platforms function smoothly. Quality assurance (QA) is therefore the focus. In this blog post, we look at innovative QA techniques for software testing and provide an insight into tools that help us meet the highest performance, reliability and user experience standards in our SmartMove platform.
Starting position
Due to the sheer complexity of a large mobility platform, errors remain undetected despite extensive testing. For example, we once found a bug in our platform that could cause entire microservices to fail due to too large file uploads. From this, we were also able to derive improvements in the areas of communication between several microservices, the simultaneous use of our REST endpoints by different clients, and coordination between our internal teams.
Test methodologies and tools that we use
Solving all of the issues described above at once was a complicated task. We have therefore opted for a two-pronged testing approach that uses automated testing and manual, exploratory testing at the same time. The purpose of automated testing is to use software tools to create test cases that ensure that updates do not involve new errors. Exploratory testing, on the other hand, is aimed at manual testing in order to identify alleged, completely unknown sources of error. Our main goal was to cover every discovered error with an (automated) test case.
For example, we have implemented end-to-end testing in Selenium. These automatically imitate user interactions in the web portal and thus cover a wide range of use cases. This includes errors that were discovered during exploratory testing or errors that occurred repeatedly. In addition, the entire software platform is tested, as everything from the front-end client to the microservices in the backend is integrated in the tests.
In addition, we implemented API tests that directly test the interfaces of the SmartMove platform backend. We used the karate framework for this.
The use of these two tools, together with exploratory testing, enabled us to reduce the number of errors and significantly increase system stability.
As already mentioned, exploratory testing is an important component of quality assurance for us. As a result, we were able to discover errors that were difficult to find through automated tests, such as those in the area of user experience and user interface design. In addition, through manual testing, our QA team was able to better empathize with the user's point of view and get to know our platform from a new, important perspective. The resulting findings resulted in direct improvements in our automated tests.
After we were able to quickly improve our platform with the measures mentioned above, we decided to develop a comprehensive test strategy and test plan. The test strategy is based on all the experience we have gained through previous testing and is suitable for use in all future projects. As a result, we are now able to set up and carry out consistent, meticulous and extensive QA processes.
Quality improvements away from software
Problems can also arise away from programmed software, especially when several teams work together. A major challenge for us was to improve communication between backend and frontend teams. Uncoordinated releases of bug fixes or new features were often the cause of problems. That is why we have also developed clear processes here in which meetings are coordinated and collaboration tools are integrated. This ensures that all teams now work together with the same level of knowledge. As a result, our work was further accelerated and, above all, more error-free.
Future plans
Although we have already seen immense improvements in the quality and performance of our mobility platform, in our opinion, the QA journey is far from over. The mobility sector is constantly evolving, which means we are confronted with new technologies and increased user expectations. We set high standards for our work, which is why we always want to keep pace with the times when it comes to QA innovations. We would like to constantly improve our test setup and processes. For example, our plans for the future include further improving security testing and optimizing our CI/CD pipelines for even faster and more reliable deployments. With a view to the future, we are working with conviction to constantly improve our QA processes so that we can continue to offer the best solutions in the changing mobility sector.
