Before you invest in device testing

It is rarely the thing that gets a project approved, and often the thing that decides how it goes. Before you spend anything on device testing, it is worth confirming a few things are already true.

The version of the app your customers are running is rarely the one you just shipped. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

Prerequisites

• You can describe the outcome you want in one sentence
• Someone owns it after the work is done
• The newest phone is not the phone your customers own
• You have a way to tell whether it worked

What to watch for

Test on mid-range hardware and poor networks. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

Automate the regression path, test the rest by hand. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

How to tell if yours is fine

Mobile releases are slower to correct than web ones, so the cost of shipping a mistake is higher. Three things worth confirming about device testing before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• The newest phone is not the phone your customers own — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.