I had a chance to speak with Laurent Chollat, QualityKit Product Manager, SysOpen Digia. He answered our questions regarding the Quality Kit 4.0 offering. Let’s start…
Q: To whom this product is targeted to?
A: QualityKit is addressed to companies which are involved in Symbian smartphone creation and in Symbian application development. The reason for being able to address such a wide audience resides in the fact that QualityKit is an end-to-end test automation solution: from unit/module and integration testing (EUnit Pro) to UI/functional testing (AppTest Pro).
As a result the tool can be used from low layers smartphone integration up to functional testing of an application.
Q: What are the tool’s benefits?
A: I see three main benefits. The most prominent benefit relates to the productivity gain. On average, the tool enables a 40% project productivity gain, while, when focusing on functional testing; the tool reaches a test automation ratio of 70%, while keeping the test case maintenance low and their re-usability high.
The second related benefit is that once a test case is automated, it can be executed unattended, allowing users to focus on their core tasks: developers can focus on creating and improving code, while test engineers can focus on test planning.
The last benefit is related to the short learning curve, enabling a rapid productivity gain realization. The pay back time is further shortened by the fact that the price level of the tool, despite numerous improvements, has been kept at a low level.
Q: What differentiates QualityKit from other testing solutions?
A: The main difference is that our offering is fully focusing on Symbian environment and has been developed since the time Symbian was called EPOC.
QualityKit is a unique product family capable of addressing test automation needs from smartphone integration to application development: Tool chain consistency, where all your needs in a specific area can be addressed by a single vendor is usually seen as a benefit: it is easier to manage it from a technical aspect (installation, training, compatibility issues) as well as from a support and cost angle (1 stop shop principles).
Finally, I’d like to say that what makes the QualityKit unique is its large user base. QualityKit is used by most of the Smartphone manufacturers and their key partners. QualityKit has always supported the latest releases (bi-weekly release support cycle) of the Symbian OS over the last 2 and half years, enabling our key customers to use the same tool all the way through their development despite the dramatic changes that Symbian, S60 and UIQ introduced to their platforms.
On top of this, the tool is widely used by Symbian smartphone application developers community, via its Lite version, (the AppTestLite) which is the test automation tool provided by Symbian for the pre-certification of any Symbian application. This allows the entire Symbian community to indirectly benefit from our tool and expertise.
Q: Why is test automation so important?
A: Well, test automation is important because in the long runs it is more cost efficient that low cost country testing, while reducing the testing, debugging and release cycle.
But from our perspective the most important relevant part of test automation is that it should be fully embedded with processes, not just a nice to have add-on once the application is near completion. This is the reason why we stress the importance of unit, module and integration testing as well as regular build process, as an integrated part of test automation. Starting test automation from the developer’s desks improves code quality, and running these tests during the build process helps in monitoring the maturity and stability of the application and its components.
Q: What will be the future direction of this product?
A: With the release of 4.0, we have brought the tool to a high maturity level. The future driving force is naturally to follow trends in the eco-system and to continuously integrate relevant functionalities for our customers. Beside this, we also aim at bringing further of our expertise and knowledge into the AppTestLite.
For more information email laurent.chollat@sysopendigia.com or qualitykit@sysopendigia.com.