Device testing for small teams

It comes up on almost every project, usually later than it should. Most advice about device testing assumes a team that does not exist at your size. Here is the version that does not.

You do not control the device, the network, or the operating system version, and the design has to accept that. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.

What to keep

The newest phone is not the phone your customers own. 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.

What to drop

Process that exists to coordinate ten people is overhead when there are two of you. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens.

The practical version

Automate the regression path, test the rest by hand. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.

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
• Test on mid-range hardware and poor networks — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.