Software Testing is the process of verifying and validating if the software which we have built is working as per expectations. A software tester should have the intent to find defects and make sure that the application is working properly. In order to achieve this, different test techniques such as automation testing, performance testing, unit testing are used. As GUIs are critical components of today’s software, there is more emphasis on GUI testing.
A lot of people are automating their web applications. This is definitely a good thing for testing per se. But what happens is that they focus more on the tools rather than the testing.
Why is that a problem? Because testing of a web application shouldn’t be done through just the graphic user interface (GUI). Instead, the application should be thoroughly tested using unit testing as well. GUI tests tend to be slower and more fragile. Through unit testing, we can reduce the time effectively both in writing and execution of test cases. Also, there will be less chance of missing functional test cases which are to be executed as the focus will only be on the functionality in Unit Tests, whereas in GUI testing the focus is more on the integration of the functionalities.
An example of something that could be tested using unit tests is the Textbox validation. Data is entered in String format in the application. The logic that validates whether it is following all the validation applied should probably be a unit test. There will be some code that receives a String or something similar and returns true or false. There will be another unit test which will receive some numerical value and return true or false.
Unit testing aims to test small portions of your code (individual classes/methods) in isolation from the rest of the application which provides more focus on the functionality testing.
The concat method below accepts a boolean value as input and appends the two strings passed in only if the boolean value is true:
Here, if I try to test the same functionality by GUI, I would need to enter two different Strings in different text boxes e.g. text boxes for First Name and Last Name in any application and verify on some other page after navigating that the name after concatenation is displayed correctly. With a tool such as selenium, it would take much longer to write a simple test case to verify the above scenario.
However, some functionalities should only be tested through the user interface. GUI testing may consist of system/ functional/acceptance testing, where the whole system can be tested together to ensure it does what it is supposed to do under real-life circumstances.
In such cases, it is valuable to separate responsibilities. Selenium is not just a tool for verification but also allows navigation using an actual browser. Verification should be done using other tools. They include unit testing frameworks or BDD frameworks. Being a Quality Engineer I prefer to use Cucumber. It depends on the application and its usability.
Separating navigation from verification is one way to understand the problem. It leads to a methodology known as the Page Object Pattern. This means that using that page object makes it easier to adhere to the Single Responsibility Principle, SRP. Using page objects save a lot of problems when the layout, not the logic, is changed in a web application.
What is a page object?
It is a class that abstracts away interaction with a web page. An example could be entering values in a form and submitting it. The methods in the page object know the name of different widgets so the user can work at a higher abstraction level. Instead of working on the level send-keys to web element, the user can say, “buy three different types of Headphones” and not care about how the widget that is used is located in the code.
Instead of mixing the verification code and navigation code, the test writer is able to focus on the expected behavior and nothing else.
Unit tests are meant to be small, fast, encapsulated tools to test classes and methods in isolation. They don’t test what happens to your application under real-world conditions. How does your app behave under Windows 2000, Windows 8, Windows 10, Mac, Linux? What happens to your server when 10 or 1000 users access it simultaneously? How about the same test with 6 years of data on 70,000 accounts?
You know the answer- functional testing via the user interface is usually the most effective way to broaden the scope and depth of your testing to include real-world scenarios which integrate all the components of your application system, while unit tests are used to check whether units of applications are working as per design and handling error and exception more neatly. Both positive and negative conditions should handle properly.
If you ask patients what is their biggest gripe with healthcare services, you’ll hear a lot of common responses– doctors’ indifference to patient’s problems, privacy during illness and treatment, more waiting times during hospital visits, and so on. But if you turn the tables on doctors and ask their biggest gripe with patients, you’ll get answers like lack of adherence to medication, failure to understand the implications of not following medical advice, missing regular checkups, and so on.
Digital healthcare applications that try to solve these problems (and fail) fall behind in understanding that they’re missing an important link- effective patient engagement.
When patients lack an understanding of ‘why’ of the treatment, they are less likely to follow it. They underestimate their own role in the recovery process which ultimately jeopardizes their health. For instance– if a person is on his weight-loss journey, then lack of information around how long will the program run, when would he start seeing results, how often he has to measure his vital stats, what would he achieve after 3-months of rigorous diet, prove to be demotivating.
Engaging actively with the patients is the only way to keep them motivated through the journey– whether it’s healing from a chronic illness or transformation into a new lifestyle. This is where we need to take action and design a holistic patient engagement solution.
So, what is patient engagement and how can we make it better?
Patient engagement is the communication that happens between the patients/users and healthcare services providers (doctors, insurance providers, pharmacy). To make patient engagement better, we need to design the app in a way that there is an active indulgence from patients’ side. We need to transform their experience in a manner so that they can take the leap from a passive care recipient to an active participant. We need to engage them with defined roles and responsibilities.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t intend to say that we should offload all the responsibilities from the provider. My point is that we need to hold patients accountable for the outcomes and empower them to have the best health outcomes possible. To make patients adhere to the treatment and keep them engaged during the interactions certain aspects need to be kept in mind while designing the UI.
Invest time in user research
Healthcare is a vast and complex domain. There are many diseases and multiple ways to treat those diseases. The challenges are a mix of known unknowns and unknown unknowns. So, it is important to understand the market and the users.
To design a great patient experience, start at the beginning. Invest time in the discovery phase. Research various aspects of the problem statement. Understand the user demographics, what problems they face, and what solutions they imagine. After you have a first version ready, roll it out in the market to a limited target audience. Observe how the innovators and the early adopters receive it and gradually start including the rest of the audience.
Go beyond the happy scenarios
Healthcare organizations/service providers collect feedback from patients in the form of surveys and interviews and use them to form opinions– how was their experience with the doctor, how satisfied they feel with the treatment, and so on.
But often they miss out on collecting feedback on other aspects, such as– how much time did they spend in the waiting room, how easy/difficult it was for them to book an appointment, did they receive the right information on appointment rescheduling and so on.
To design a better patient engagement, think holistically and include all the touchpoints where the patients can get stuck or feel helpless. We need to design an experience that holds patients’ hands throughout their user journey.
The earlier example I shared is for an appointment booking system, but you can apply it to any healthcare product– be it pharmacy management or insurance management. Look for areas where your users face resistance in sharing their problems.
For instance- consider an insurance management application that allows people to purchase and renew their insurance. The happy scenario would be users buying the insurance as per their requirement. But we can think beyond that. What if we can inform and motivate users to fill in as much details about their health to book an insurance that suits their requirements.
Make data security a priority
Technology is changing the way people perceive healthcare. But one thing hasn’t changed– concern over data protection and privacy. Healthcare products and digital apps carry lots of sensitive and confidential information that is prone to theft and misuse. This is why designing healthcare products is more complex than other digital applications.
But designing with an extra layer of security and privacy regulations makes products difficult to use and complex to understand. To design better patient engagement, think about the concerns of your users. Design your solutions while following safety protocols and compliance standards.
In addition to that, convey the security measures you’ve implemented to the users. When users understand that the application is safe and trustworthy, their engagement levels improve.
Empower patients to play an active role
Most patients lack understanding of their ailments which reduces their involvement in the treatment and decision-making process. The solution is effective patient education through multiple mediums so that they can select the medium as per their convenience and get a better understanding about their disease and the ongoing treatment.
Whether it’s patients or caregivers, empower them to play a key role in helping themselves/their family members, by teaching them how a given treatment is relevant. Patient engagement improves when users are educated, informed and onboarded in the process. This helps patients to be at the driver seat of their treatment.
Another way to empower patients is to provide them coordinated, accessible and customized information that suits their requirements. An example of this could be- if they receive a push notification of reminder about renewal of their insurance policy, integrate it with the system that allows them to renew it right at that moment.
Practice empathy
Every patient is different. Some are happy with new advancements in healthcare and are ready to try emerging technologies like AI, robotics to take charge of their health. Whereas, others are still hesitant in adopting new ways of treatment. Especially elderly and people with disabilities.
To offer better patient engagement to them, indulge with them in the traditional way. For example- an elderly having early signs of Parkinson’s disease might not feel comfortable in interacting with a virtual nurse assistant. There are two ways to help them- either you find a way to help them come out of their comfort zone or you offer help the traditional way, i.e. setting up an in-house visit.
Practice empathy to experience what they feel and go through every day. Support them in their journeys to enable better long-term treatment outcomes.
Enable communication
Communication is a very important aspect to keep the patient adhere to the treatment. When patients go through a treatment, they have numerous questions in their mind. A good patient experience is when every question is answered. So, there should be a way where users can ask their questions and get answers.
To enable unhindered communication, an application must have a community where everyone keeps posting their queries and gets motivated by each other. In urgency, the patient should be able to connect with the support staff too for any assistance.
Make information accessible
It is very challenging for the patient and doctors to manage and remember every detail of the patient. So the system should be designed in such a way that it makes managing the clinical history of the patient easier. The doctor should be easily able to access the information from different patient care-related venues.
Deep dive into analytics
Launching an application is never enough. One must look at the data and understand what’s working, what can be improved and what has failed. Patient engagement can be greatly improved if we care enough for the data and take action on improving the shortcomings. For example- analytics shows that most users drop at the payment CTA for booking an online appointment. This information can help us improve the payment flow. We can ask questions like- can we reduce the number of steps for payment, what security measures can we add in the payment gateway so that users can trust it, and so on.
Google’s HEART framework can also be used to measure task success in healthcare products.
H defines happiness which indicates if the patients and physicians are finding the app useful and easy to use.
E defines engagement which shows if the patients and doctors are using the application to its fullest and are adhering to the treatment.
A defines adoption which shows how many users are signing-up for it and adopting the new features.
R defines retention which indicates if users are coming back to manage their appointments, refills, reminders, schedule.
T defines task completion which shows if patients and doctors are able to complete their tasks easily.
Using all these parameters, one can extract valuable information and use it to improve patient engagement.
Improving patient engagement is not a quick fix that one can do merely by desiring it. You have to do the hard work to understand the patient, interact with them and have an empathetic approach to understand their world view. A good patient experience improves engagement levels and is directly linked to the success of the application.
One of my friends and mentor once shared the secret behind his success- I’ll always be grateful for my struggles and the criticism I received because if not for them, I would have never been where I am today.When I asked him what kind of criticism– positive or negative– was most helpful, he replied – “This is where all problems begin. We weigh feedback as positive or negative criticism. Instead, we must think of feedback as one of the ways to accelerate learning and do better next time.”This made me remember a quote from Norman Vincent Peale- “The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.”
We all have done that at some point in our life. We want to hear more praises to validate our talent. But we associate criticism with negativity. The moment we hear criticism, we let our guards up.
What we need is a mindset shift that allows us to look at criticism as a tool to improve our work.
Why is critique culture so important?
Short answer– to create better ideas, build better products and become a better designer/developer/leader.
Long answer– The answer lies in C. S. Lewis’s quote that says “Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction.”
Consider this example- while designing a healthcare application, a designer oversees the usage of colors and letter casing in designs. Another designer, who has past experience in working on healthcare apps shares why letter casing is important to consider during design decisions.
This is just one of the many examples. I’m sure you can think of one from your own experience where, upon receiving feedback, you were happily surprised- “Wow! That’s a great suggestion. Why didn’t I think of that?”
What should critique givers keep in mind?
Critique-givers have a defining role in the success of a product.
Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull credits the success of Toy Story to the honest and candid feedback that everyone in the team shared when they saw the first screening of the movie. He admits that “Early on, all of our movies suck.” and goes on to say that it’s the critique that brings out the best in their movies.
What should critique-seekers keep in mind?
Theodore Roosevelt once said- “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming.”
If you’re a critique receiver, one thing to keep in mind is that criticism is not for you, but for your work. So, even if there are any harsh words, take them in your stride.
How to run critique sessions?
For critique seekers
Before beginning the critique sessions, set the context for everyone who is going to share their feedback. Send an email to your team with the time and location details of the session. Mention the subject of the critique and include a short summary of the design you will be presenting.
For example- always tell your team about the user personas for whom you’ve designed the application. It helps them understand the rationale behind your decisions.
During the session, listen to everyone’s feedback with an intent to improve your designs. Explain everything that must be explained. Remember, you’re the only person in the room who has the entire picture in your mind. Everyone else is seeing the project for the first time, so it’s okay if they question your choices (By the way, they won’t if you share the context beforehand.)
Be present in the discussion. Listen with utmost attention. Capture everything; even the harsh feedback. You can always decide later which ones you wish to implement. And when the session ends, thank everyone for their time and feedback. You really must do that.
Most importantly, avoid contradicting the critique by getting into an argument with critique-giver. Getting defensive or angry or taking criticism personally (even if it’s hurled at you in your face) means that you are not ready to hear the truth about your work.
After the session, take time to reflect upon every feedback. Not everything would be worthy of action. So don’t fret over implementing every single feedback. In case you need any clarification, reach out to the person who gave you feedback. Don’t stop before you implement, showcase, iterate on the feedback and present a better solution than before.
For critique givers
Before the critique sessions, understand every detail about the project you’re going to see. If it’s not already provided, ask for related information about the project’s goals, the user personas, their pain points, so that you’re in a better position to suggest improvements.
During the critique session, make sure that you are criticizing the work, not the person. Put aside all biases and prejudices and focus on solving the problem. Empathize with the end user (not the designer), and keep your target audience in mind. Ask genuine and thoughtful questions that help you uncover the intent and rationale of the designs. The designer has worked hard to design the project, they deserve your patience and respect.
If you like something, praise lavishly. If you don’t like something, be critical. But avoid being harsh or rude. Offer constructive feedback, something that can inspire the designer to think in a different way. Listen attentively to what others have to say and provide inputs in case you want to add something to it.
After the critique session, follow-up with the designer to check if he/she needs further help. If the person comes back to you with iterations, share your candid feedback (once again!) without shit-sandwiching it.
When two people discuss and take feedback from each other, they build on each others’ suggestions and make the product twice better. When more people get involved, it takes an exponential form where each member builds on others’ opinion, or suggestion. This is why critique sessions, as a cultural practice, are far more effective than peer-to-peer feedback.
Another reason to create a culture of design critique is that it creates an atmosphere of psychological safety in the team where everyone knows they’ll get honest, candid feedback from their peers and leaders. In such teams, learning and growth happens organically, not forcefully. Passion to do more, be more, drives people, rather than appreciation or promotions. And when that happens, people don’t feel an iota of hesitation in sharing their thoughts. They openly talk about what’s on their minds. They share ideas, opinions, and criticize when things don’t go right.
Isn’t that enough reason to create a culture of criticism?
API testing is a type of software testing wherein an engineer tests not just the functionality but performance, reliability and security for an application. APIs are tested to examine if the application would work the way it is expected to, as APIs are the core of an application’s functionalities.
API testing during development can reveal issues with API, server, other services, network and more, those which one may not discover or solve easily after deployment.
However, testing APIs is difficult. Instead of just verifying an endpoint’s response, one can have integration tests with Postman to examine and validate the responses. Teams these days may also want to automate running these tests as soon as a deployment is done. One approach we can take is to have our integration tests run every time a developer checks in code to the repo.
Adding this layer of Quality check, can ensure that the existing functionalities still work the way they were expected to, with an additional benefit for the developers to validate that their code is doing exactly what it was intended to.
Tools for API test automation in CI
CI refers to continuous integration. Integration of test scripts and a test tool with the continuous build system where the test scripts can be run along with every new deployment or on a regular basis (daily, weekly or fortnightly)
Postman: Integration tests with Postman.
Newman: Create a PowerShell file that runs these integration tests via command line.
Jenkins: Add a Post Build step in Jenkins to execute the PowerShell script whenever a build is initiated.
API Selection
I have implemented this procedure in our Project using the GPS APIs, but for instantiating here, let’s take up the following APIs:
Open Weather Map: Free public APIs.
I chose this as it is a free collection of APIs that anyone can subscribe to and have their own API keys to operate with.
Create Integration Tests
For the first test, let’s take up a simple GET request to get Weather by ID. To interact through the APIs, make sure to use the API key received on subscribing to the OWM services.
Steps to First Integration Test
Make an environment on Postman say, ‘Weather Map’ and define the environment variables in it. [Refer ‘Managing environments’].
Add the Prerequisites in the Pre-Req tab to set up the test.
Collections
Like the above API tests, one can have multiple test scripts for multiple endpoints. And these multiple test scripts can be run in sequence to have an end to end test suite. The way to have a test suite is to keep multiple test scripts in a place holder called as a Collection in Postman.
These collections can then further be executed through the collection runner in the tool.
Collection Runner
A collection runner can be used to have a collection of API endpoints with their test scripts at one place and therefore run them one by one in a sequential manner. The user just needs to run the collection just once with all the required test data, test scripts and for as many iterations one may want. The result of the collection run is a test report, comprehensive enough to monitor the performance of the APIs and also to re-try running the failed test scripts.
For elaborate study on Collection Runners, refer Link.
Though the user interface of Postman’s collection runner is good enough, yet, to integrate the system with Jenkins, we need to run our collections via command line. So, a way to run collections via the command line is through Newman.
Newman
Newman is a Node Package Manager (NPM) package that permits us to run and test collections directly from the command line.
Pre-requisites:
NodeJS and
NPM already installed.
Commands to be run on Windows Powershell
node -v [to verify the version of NodeJs installed]
npm -v [to verify the version of NPM installed]
$npm install -g newman [to install Newman]
Once the required installations are done, one needs to have his collections and Environment exported to JSON files in the local system. These files can then be passed as arguments to Newman.
Steps to get the environment and collections on the local system:
Click on the Download and Export button in Postman.
Download the collection
Download the environment
Open command prompt and raise your privileges. This is important for you to execute the script.
Adding Postman Tests to Jenkins
We first need to export our Postman files (Environment and Collections) and add them to GIT, along with our Powershell script to run the tests through Jenkins build.
“Add the Postman files to the root of the project.”
Telling Jenkins to run Newman
For this we write a script that calls Newman and passes it the Environment and Collection JSON files.
– ‘exit $LASTEXITCODE’: On typing this command, you will see the result of the last command. We do this to make sure that on every loop, the Newman command is successful. If any of the tests fail, we have to stop the script and exit 1. It will result in a failed build on Jenkins.
Adding Script to Jenkins
Steps:
Login to Jenkins and create a Freestyle Project.
Start by configuring this project to pull your repo code from Git.
In the General Tab, go to build section
Running the build and monitoring Results
Try running the project and examine the results.
One can make out successful entrance into the powershell script with the statement ‘Inside Powershell script’ in the Jenkins output.
Conclusion
Improving continuous integration utilizing Postman, Newman and Jenkins adds another layer of quality assurance into our development life cycle. While this is a huge step in automation, we need to emphasize on the fact that our test coverage depends on the quality of our test scripts.
Like many others, my family and I have done our best to enjoy the unexpectedly large amount of time we have together at home due to social distancing guidelines. Adjusting to the new normal, we have relied heavily on Internet access not only for work and school, but to stay sane and keep the peace. My wife and I both continue to work from home, frequently videoconferencing and collaborating with colleagues. The kids finished the school year online and now they are starting the new school year with a mixed arrangement of physical and virtual learning. Many hours of streaming video have been consumed. This isn’t an experience we want to repeat, but I believe it would have been far more difficult and stressful if we lacked the connectivity needed to remain productive, informed, and entertained during these times. Without that high-speed connection to the digital realm, this experience would feel more like we were stranded in a country where we didn’t speak the language — surrounded by activity yet unable to participate. It would create the very real feeling of “looking in from the outside.” The rapid onset of social distancing or stay-at-home measures has created just this feeling for a large number of people. Across the world, many people were suddenly thrust into unfamiliar remote working situations. And with the global percentage of households connected to the internet at only 55%, many organizations, in turn, discovered a digital divide that needed to be bridged for some employees. For example, some companies successfully stood up the infrastructure and processes necessary to support new remote capabilities, only to find that some of their employees lacked the connectivity or technological proficiency to be productive remote workers.
These current circumstances have placed the digital divide –not always apparent to many companies previously — into sharp relief. They’ve shown that digital life skills and work skills – not to mention the access to technology and connectivity needed to enable those skills — are as essential to us now as hunting and horseback riding were to our ancestors. Like STEM education, an emphasis on digital skill-building could help many people be more productive and could provide them a better work environment, more income, and a brighter future.
Infrastructure and processes to bridge the digital divide
Other related questions around remote work abound, especially in terms of corporate infrastructure. Would employees be able to use devices they already owned to perform their jobs, or would they need to be supplied with equipment? Where would that come from and how would it be prepared to access corporate data? And many were unprepared and unsure if their network was up to the task when demand suddenly shifted from inside the enterprise to requests from remote workers.
Processes were another big issue. In addition to addressing where we work, enterprises have had to consider how we work. What tasks does a company perform that must continue and could those be adapted for remote access? For some, the work needed to turn this into a distributed, remote work process was well documented. Team-oriented jobs, however, required more reengineering and may not have been as well defined.
Remote working: temporary or permanent?
Over the past few months, we have been helping our global enterprise customers adopt to this new environment and discussing the future of workplace. Many are debating whether remote work is a temporary fix or a permanent shift. In every case, I’m sure they will be reflecting on this experience and its challenges – and the digital divide in particular – to help them improve their resilience and that of their employees. These lessons will heavily influence the investments they make going forward in all areas of technology, training and business process reengineering.
If you are a product manager you would have experienced at least one of the below scenarios.Scenario 1: During a meeting with partners (we refer to our clients as partners), a conflict surfaces while recalling the reasons for a particular decision in the past. You have one version of the story while the partner remembers an altogether different version or, worse, doesn’t remember anything about the decision.Scenario 2 : A new team member joins the team. During a discussion, he/she asks “why are we doing it this way” and you go blank. You need time to recollect your thoughts to give the right answer.
Scenario 3: Before starting the project, you identify risks that might arise during the development phase. Your partners ignore it and give you a go-ahead. Months later, when you start facing technical issues and convey it to them, your partners don’t remember the conversation you had at the beginning of the project.
Scenario 4: During knowledge transition sessions, you share everything that you know about the product’s development history. But you fail to remember when and why this decision came into existence. It’s difficult to recollect exact conversations that led you to take this decision. It’s all in the email threads but even those emails are hard to find.
Do you feel deja-vu reading the above scenarios?
I do. I have lost count of the times I’ve faced these scenarios. I am sure you would have faced them too sometime in your career. It’s not that I haven’t tried anything to overcome these challenges. I have tried different things apart from discussing over calls with our clients/partners-
Mentioning all the important decisions in emails
Mentioning all risks in the initial proposal
Mentioning new risks in the emails as they come
Sending MoMs with a defined structure- discussions, decisions, action items
For any kind of technical decision, attaching an analysis document in the respective JIRA ticket and adding a comment with the final takeaway.
But, the truth is, as the product grows and the team expands, searching emails for MoMs and referring to JIRA tickets doesn’t make the cut.
Especially if you are working on a big project that goes on for years. After a time, recovering JIRA tickets and long email threads feels like digging the Earth for a dead body. I myself have faced this while recalling why we decided using Inspectlet over Fullstory? Or, why did we decide to push the MVP deadline?
So, what’s the solution?
When I started looking for a solution to this problem, I discovered that I am not alone. A lot of PMs face this problem. Thankfully, there’s a solution to tackle this problem. A product manager can maintain registers/logs for a product that can help him/her remember important product decisions. These two logs are-
Decision log
Risk log
Decision log
A decision log is a centralized list of all critical decisions taken throughout the product’s life cycle. It can be a business decision impacting the delivery, a technical decision, a process decision or a people decision.
This helps in effective communication in the present and then in future for recall times in conflicting situations.
What goes inside a decision log?
What is the decision about?
When was the decision made? (Date)
Why this decision? Pros and cons, if any.
Who are the contributors? Who is the approver?
Outcome of the decision?
When the decision was proposed?
Risk Log
It would be a centralized list of all potential risks and issues identified throughout the product life cycle. This includes all the information of the identified risk – nature of risk, level of risk, mitigation etc.
Many times, we maintain the product risk log for internal purposes only. But, keeping it open with all stakeholders really helps.
All the risks should be identified and communicated to the stakeholders using the Risk Log itself right at the beginning.
After that, risk identification should be a recurring activity. You can make it a part of your sprint rituals – sprint planning, retrospective or even in your daily scrum meetings.
Risks can be identified by anyone – Stakeholders, Leads, PMs, Designer, QAs or Developers.
Just as in decision log, a risk’s priority could change in future or a risk could become an issue (i.e. already occurred). You can read about Risks vs Issues. Hence, at a given time the risk register should show the updated risk information.
Also, once the risk becomes an issue it can go to the Issue Log which is the same as Risk Log and usually kept in parallel.
In short, maintaining Decision and Risk logs in your product might be an additional task for you in the starting. But, once it becomes a part of your process, it really proves beneficial in the long run. You can use it to-
Keep everyone on the same page.
Save time in debating/recalling the reasons for a particular decision.
Avoid “We told you so” situations that become the root cause of conflicts..
One of my ex-colleagues left her job to move to a new organization in Feb 2020. She worked in her new workplace for one month before the world shut down. Just like everyone, her entire organization shifted to remote. A few weeks into the lockdown, I called her to catch up. We talked about random things and she told me that she badly missed Anteelo– the people, the culture, and the feeling of oneness.It wasn’t that her current organization didn’t have a good culture. No. In fact, she was happy in her new role. Her peers were friendly, the work was challenging, and her leader was supportive. She just missed the camaraderie in her new workplace.
My friend is one of those rare people who kickstarts conversations, takes initiatives, and makes friends easily. But in the new organization, she felt limited by the barriers created by remote work. Before lockdown, she hardly got much time to bond with her colleagues and now in the lockdown, whenever she tried a new initiative, it crashed after leaving her circle of influence (which by the way was limited to her team). All of this despritied her.
And she isn’t alone.
The feeling of ‘I don’t have any friends at work’, ‘I still feel like a stranger in a foreign land’, ‘I don’t think anyone likes me here’, is quite common. And though, it’s normal to feel these emotions in the initial few months when people are settling in, but beyond that, they are a RED FLAG.
A dissatisfied new hire is like a person standing at the edge of a mountain. We can’t let them slip.
One of the solutions to tackle this problem is to spend more time onboarding them — defining the relationship with the new hire sets the right foundation.
A good onboarding practice ensures that the new hire is aligned with the vision of the organization and has enough resources and support to wade through the nitty gritty of how things work in the organization. A good onboarding is like a first impression. If you get it right at the honeymoon phase, you’re likely to be together for a long time.
But all this was easy when a new hire joined in a physical workplace. The part where they met their peers, received a warm welcome at their desk, participated in onboarding rituals, all of this added a personal touch to their onboarding experience. If they had any concerns, they could easily reach out to people, or ask for help. Their problems were addressed in real-time, and were given importance (and precedence) over other regular day-tasks.
Those were old days. Sigh!
In the new world order, the physical distance has posed a new challenge to integrate the new hires into the organization’s soul. So how does one ensure that the new hires receive the same (or even better) virtual onboarding experience and feel welcomed.
I can share a few changes we made to Anteelo’ onboarding process. It’s not bullet-proof. But I like the fact that we acted fast and made changes well in time.
Interact with the new hires before they join
In the new normal, we started a new practice– after new hires accepted the offer to join the organization, we spent some time connecting with them informally. We shared our excitement about welcoming them in the team. We also gave them an overview of the project they’ll be working on and shared a little bit about the existing team members so that they knew whom they’ll be working with.
If you wish to imbibe this practice, you can add some extra elements like talking to them about their expectations, their feelings about joining your organization and so on. The idea is to make them comfortable and let them know you’re expecting them to join your tribe soon.
Involve the existing team members in the onboarding process
In the old normal, team members were the first ones that got acquainted with the new joinee. The team was responsible for making sure they went together on lunch and coffee breaks and made the person comfortable.
In the virtual setup, none of this is possible. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t make efforts to make the new hire feel welcomed. At Anteelo, we tackled this problem by taking turns on video calls and talking to the new team members on their first day. Every time a new Quant joined our team, we asked him/her about their day, and if they needed any help.
These are little things, and you might feel that you’re interrupting/disturbing the new person. But it’s the only way to ensure that he/she feels comfortable in the new setup.
Give them a virtual tour of your office
We all are itching to go back to our cozy nook in the office, to feel the warmth of workplace vibes, to smile, greet, bump into each other. Imagine the enormity of this itch in new hires– how does my new workplace look, where would I sit when I join the office, would there be a coffee machine, a foosball table, a breakout area?
I bet there are other questions too that they go through in their mind while making the decision to switch. One of the solutions that we discovered is giving a virtual tour of the office through videos/photos. It not only settles their curiosity and piques their interest, but also helps build familiarity with the organization.
Retrospect on your onboarding kit
Earlier our onboarding kit consisted of a laptop, a bag and a notebook. We thought of it as a whole because our other practices complemented the physical kit. We spent hours talking to the new hire– introducing them to everyone, aligning them to their peers, and being with them through every step of the onboarding.
This year, we asked ourselves– what else can we add in the virtual onboarding kit so that it brings a smile on their face? We wanted to keep the gesture small but impactful. So we designed a greeting card that welcomes the new team member and added a small potted plant in the virtual onboarding kit.
The card has a message to welcome them to our team. The potted plant is a gesture of how we wish to see them grow with us, just like the plant. It’s a small change, and we’re happy everyone likes it (so far).
Set up a central repository of resources
The shift to the remote setup was abrupt. But, it made us realize the mistakes we were making earlier. We realized that it’s unfair to expect new people to remember everything. Going through all the information related to the organization in one go is exhausting.
So we made the shift to a digital setup by making a central repository of every information. Everything is now available on Zepplin — be it leave guidelines, WFH manual or core values of our organization. We let our new team members be the owner of how, when and through what medium they want to access information.
Engage with them regularly
A regular practice to engage with new team members is to give them a stack of PDFs, videos, and presentations about the organization. It’s easy to consider that the new team member will find what they need from this Pandora box of information.
We made a shift in our mindset. We started engaging with our new team members regularly through weekly, monthly 1:1s and began asking them how it was going. By making them participate in pop quizzes and activities around our practices and vision, we eased out their familiarity with the organization.
Couple them with a work-buddy
A buddy at work is like a friend who can steer you through a freshman party and help you make new friends. At Anteelo, we always had the buddy system. In the remote setup, being a buddy to a new hire turned out to be an even bigger responsibility.
So we tweaked the guidelines a bit and motivated the work-buddy to be more open, approachable, and proactive in their conversations with the new Quant.
Apart from these virtual onboarding practices, you can even leverage social media to your advantage. By welcoming people on your social media platforms, introducing them in your network, you send them a message that you’re welcoming them wholeheartedly.
Good onboarding practices help you retain the talent for a much longer period. So, make sure a new hire’s first few months are positive and productive.
Small talk is delightful. It’s an easygoing, inconsequential conversation where you’re not running to reach an answer. It flows like wind, from one talker to the next. Small talk appears trivial, but it’s a way for strangers to know each other and for friends to bond over little details.In office, people indulge in small talk during watercooler run-ins, in elevators, and in big meetings where they don’t know each other. Small talk is used to break the ice with casual questions like ‘how are you?’, ‘How’s the weather in your city?’, ‘How was your day?’.In human conversations, small talk serves many purposes. It’s like a bonding ritual. If the two people are meeting for the first time, it acts as a conversation starter. But if they already know each other, it serves as a conversation kickstarter before diving into the real conversation. Small talk is the foundation of good conversations and great relationships.
In a chatbot, small talk enhances the user experience by bringing a feeling of connection. By adding answers to inputs like ‘How are you?’ and ‘Are you really a robot?” in the chatbot’s architecture, we make it less robotic and more humane. We give our chatbot a human character that builds an invaluable connection with the user.
How can small talk help in a healthcare chatbot?
A good healthcare chatbot is the one that answers users’ questions with accuracy, timeliness and empathy.
But a great healthcare chatbot is the one that understands the moods of users, urgency of the situation and answers accordingly.
For instance, when you’re panicking about waking up to bloodshot eyes, the chatbot calms you down with some first-aid steps. If you’re in a rush to book an appointment, the chatbot sends you proactive information on which doctor is nearest to your location. If you’re feeling low, the chatbot brightens up your mood with some light-hearted conversation. Just as a good friend would do.
The highlight of the above conversation is the personal touch in the conversation. It doesn’t feel like we’re reading a conversation with a chatbot. That’s the magic of small talk. Phrases like ‘that’s dreadful’, ‘wish you a speedy recovery’, add a human element and creates a connection of care between the bot and the end-user.
Small talk in a healthcare chatbot also helps create trust. It eases them through important and time-sensitive tasks— like emergency calls to ambulances — with empathy. Contrary to this, robotic responses in yes or no and apathetic comprehension of chatbots frustrates users and they go elsewhere in search for answers.
But how can chatbots mimic human-like conversations and engage users in delightful conversation? By leveraging the power of AI and NLP.
How to implement small talk?
There are certain guidelines that one can follow to tailor such conversations.
Decide the voice and tone of your chatbot. Every response should reflect the personality of your chatbot.
Initially, you’ll have to hardcode some of the small talk in your chatbot. So, brainstorm ways in which users can ask questions. Do some research and make some educated guesses to decide on the most relevant questions that your targeted audience may ask. Cover the edge cases as well– from casual questions to genuine queries that users might ask.
Write answers to each question as per your understanding.
Keep the small talk brief and clear. Don’t go too far from the crux of the conversation.
There can be multiple levels of small talk. Each parent question can have a child query. The child query can only be asked when the parent question has been asked by the user and the chatbot has responded to it.
Small talk should always be accompanied by a call to action or a solution. Example- You: “Do you really exist?” Chatbot: “Yes I exist as a computer program. An intelligent human created me, so you can trust me. How can I help you?”
Train your chatbot to learn from the conversations of small talk.
Small talk is language-specific. So give users an option to talk to the chatbot in their native language.
Small talk makes the interactions with chatbot intuitive. By adding a small talk feature, we can increase the number of conversations and engagement levels of the user with the chatbot. So, if you have a healthcare chatbot, consider incorporating small talk. It doesn’t even require you to do a complete overhaul of your chatbot development.
In a market fraught with stiff competition, a quick time-to-market app can make all the difference. An app that takes forever to build and deploy can crash and burn even before it goes off the shelf. Developing a mobile app is an expensive process. Creating a mobile application is a costly process, as bringing ideas into reality requires time and effort, and expenses. For instance, after the development you’ll have to pay for hosting or for marketing campaigns to spread the word. One approach to keep costs back from spiraling crazy is to decrease the application development time. In the realm of mobile apps, time is money, so the more you spend working on your app, the more it will cost. Although Android app development for business is a good choice, however, it is especially notorious for its sluggish speed. CEOs of businesses are constantly struggling to meet deadlines and take their app to the market before competitors pinch the app idea. In this tussle between speed and quality, often quality is sidelined and what results is a product that doesn’t meet your or your audience’s needs and expectations. We will be discussing in detail how to develop apps faster in the below article.
Since android application development speed is such a relevant issue, we have compiled a set of handy android tips and tricks 2021 that can help you create android apps speedily, without compromising on quality.
Android Development Tips
1. Use the latest tools
All android developers are faced with the same dilemma: too much to do and too little time to do it! Designing, prototyping, coding, testing, debugging, and the list of tasks goes on. While some of these vital steps have no short-cuts, there are valuable tools to help with others.
Here’s our countdown of developer must-have android development tools that can speed up android app development service process:
A. Genymotion
A sleek emulator that can simulate built-in sensors that a device model has. This emulator supports all existing versions of Android, cutting the need for re-configuring for different devices.
B. Hierarchy Viewer
A great tool to view your app’s tree and analyze its flaws for debugging and testing purposes. This tool, available in Android SDK, helps speed up app development by letting you merge and remove redundant elements in your app.
C. LeakCanary
Detecting memory leaks is a specialized function of this tool. These bugs are very hard to debug and the tool will ensure no leakage escapes your notice. Debugging becomes rapid and mobile.
D. Vysor
This tool helps android app maker in sharing screens between their workstations and Android devices, using just a Chrome plug-in. The tool is an answer to most developers’ prayers who find it complicated to root devices via USB. With this tool, you can share app features live with the client and receive instant feedback which is always great for the development process.
E. Butterknife
An awesome tool to improve the coding rate and readability of your boilerplate codes. This tool is a great time saver for all businesses looking to cut down app development time.
2. Low-fidelity wireframes are speedier
Wire framing is an essential step in the app development process. Using low-fidelity wireframes is better option than high-fidelity ones. These wireframes are less detailed and more fluid but they give a clear enough picture to developers and UI designers.
Going headfirst into coding is not advisable and most experienced Android app developers in New York, Florida, Texas, and other areas know this. The most crucial first step is to get designers, developers, coders and project managers on the same page. Low-fidelity wireframes do just that. They are quick to develop and are a good blueprint for the entire development team.
3. Go lean
A commonly-accepted best practice in the quick android app development process is to launch a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) with just the basic features and no frills, instead of waiting to develop and launch a full-fledged app. The MVP will help you collect user data about what’s working and what’s not. Use the build-measure-learn feedback loop to get invaluable lessons about customer feedback. This approach diminishes the risk element of your app and makes for an app that is more likely to appeal and succeed.
Another facet is using short iterations or “sprints” to break up the entire app model into smaller, doable cycles. Each sprint is complete in itself-it has the entire gamut of development steps and results in an improvised version of the previous sprint product. Speed up android and go agile in your development process. Reduce redundancy of effort and resources. This not only helps reduce development time but also saves production costs. And of course, the ultimate benefits of android app development is a risk-free product that starts churning ROI from the moment it’s launched.
4. Hire experienced developers
Once you are settled with the development platform and the tools, now comes an ideal opportunity to hire the best android developers to accelerate android application development projects. While hiring android developers, one thing that should be considered is their experience and flexibility. Why? Because if android application developers are experienced, this means that they will have proper knowledge or information on every issue that may come during the app development process.
Also, if the android app maker is interested to learn and adjust to new technologies and platforms, then that will enhance and accelerate your app development process. Adaptability plays an important part in deciding the interest level of your development group. Thus, you should employ android developers that are prepared to learn and update their abilities according to the project.
5. Delegate off-core activities
One of the android tips is to always take a wise choice to offload additional activities such as enhancing app engagement, measuring app analytics and converting free subscribers to premium ones. These activities eat up a lot of time and are better off with pre-designed applets, available at mobile engagement platforms. These applets can be incorporated in your ready app with just a few lines of code. Applets enable activities such as sharing tools, offer notification, new features tools and feedback tools.
6. Use hybrid app development
Cross-platform apps allow you to code for one app and get multiple apps that can run on all covered platforms. Hybrid app development is speedier than native app development, though it has its own set of drawbacks. But for quick market penetration, cross-platform apps may be the best choice. Later, one can go in for native apps that are more inherent, fluid, robust, and focuses on android app performance optimization.
7. Opt for automated testing
Automated testing is a sure shot measure to get secure, fully-tested apps in a fraction of time than the ones deploying manual testing. Automated testing tests an app against a full suite of testing tools simultaneously, instead of one-by-one as in manual testing. This improves test coverage, reduces testing time, and guarantees a bug-free product that is market ready.
8. Outsource specialized development steps
In-house app development is not everybody’s cup of tea. The app market is fast evolving and new apps are entering the market every day. To remain competitive, timely, and relevant, one can outsource app development to a skilled, efficient Android app development company. Even if you possess the capabilities to code or design an Android app, use domain experts for putting the whole product together and maintaining it. Not only will you get better returns on development costs, but you will also offload the hassle of running tasks that will be better handled by experienced professionals.
A common misconception shared by businesses is their misplaced fear about the cost of outsourcing. Android software development company mostly have flexible engagement models that can match product development costs to your budget. Fixed cost; time and material; and build, operate and transfer models can be evaluated to arrive at a business solution that works in your favor.
9. Cross-platform development tools
Cross-platform is the most convenient way to decrease app development time. The cross-platform tools allow users to focus on numerous mobile platforms with a similar codebase, eliminating the time that one would normally spend deciphering, reworking, and re-compiling the same code to work across various platforms.
Developing separate native applications for every platform is costly, while a hybrid app utilizes a single sharable code, which assists you to save your pockets. Cross-platform applications have a native look and feel, which is great for user experience.
There are plenty of cross-platform development tools, but some of the most used tools include:
Xamarin
Ionic
Flutter SDK
React Native
Adobe Phonegap
10. Create build variants
Loading your app with unnecessary configurations can slow down your app’s incremental builds. Retain only those configurations in your app that are required in its development and release versions. Plus, don’t waste time and effort in compiling additional resources that hold little value. Such resources include screen density resources and additional language localizations.
Wrapping Up
Manage your app development time strategically to get ahead of competition and meet tight deadlines. A minute lost in android application development services can translate to huge monetary losses. A good mobile app development company will micro-manage tasks of developments in such a way that your app hits the markets at top speed!
Also taking the above mentioned points into consideration will on how to create an app for android.
Fill up the form through this link and hire android app developers in USA that will help you validate and convert your app idea into an efficient product and create android apps.
Blockchain technology is progressively taking over the business world. The technology was once considered to be confined to bitcoins. But with time, it has proved that bitcoin is just the tip of the iceberg; the potential of the technology is beyond decentralized transactions and even our expectations. Blockchain technology revamped several industries, including Real Estate, Healthcare, Education, and Legal industry to name a few. It opened new doors of opportunities and profit for the entrepreneurs and established brands. However, the most surprising application of Blockchain is in the mobile app economy.
Wondering what is the need of Blockchain technology in the mobile industry? How can Blockchain revolutionize the world of mobile applications?
The mobile economy is undoubtedly growing rapidly and is expected to be of worth $6.3 trillion by 2021. The app stores are jammed with millions of apps and both the app developers and users are getting access to better facilities. However, despite this exponential growth and technological innovations, the mobile application development economy is still facing various issues which cannot be overlooked.
Major Mobile Economy Concerns and How Blockchain Technology Can Solve Them
Alike other centralized systems, the mobile economy also involves various intermediaries between the mobile app developers and users. These entities help in discovery, distribution, and financial transactions but at the same time, deters transparency. As a result, we face situations like security threats, inaccessible in-app purchases, data leaks, and malware-plagued downloads which not only have an adverse impact on the user experience but also affect the mobile app performance and ROI.
As we saw in our Entrepreneur’s Guide to Blockchain, the technology, with its decentralized, distributed and secure ledger feature, has the potential to revamp the way app economy functions and make the end user experience seamless and enticing. If applied correctly, blockchain can tackle the following major concerns related to mobile app economy:
App Approval
With Google and Apple’s app store being the duopoly, the current app approval process is completely handled by them. They decide which mobile app will be published on their app store and which not, based on various non-transparent quality assurance processes and distribution policies. This not only makes the process cumbersome and time-consuming but also increases the confusion among mobile app developers in case of app rejection. On the flip side, less transparency app approval process raises the risk of distribution of malware-plagued apps by the users, and thus, lesser security in the app market. With the introduction of Blockchain technology into the process, the app approvals can be made universal and transparent through a developer reputation system. The reputation system will be directly linked to the financial transactions on the public ledger and will be available for investigation all the time (as you can see in the image below). Besides, various means will be employed for identity verification and users will be empowered to create rankings for the mobile app developers and the apps they create. This will streamline the app approval process and help the smartphone users take the decision of downloading the app based on the ranking (see the image below), which will ultimately build trust, enhance security, boost downloads, and uplift app revenue.
Advertising
According to Statista, there are more than 2.8 million apps in Google Play Store and about 2.2 million apps in the Apple’s App Store. To reach the target audience and enjoy the limelight, the mobile app developers have to invest in CPI, i.e., Cost Per Installation campaigns. These campaigns are non-transparent and overpriced, which makes the situation shady and risky. Moreover, as you can see in the picture below, the profit gained by the mobile application developers from the advertising is divided and shared to middlemen because of which the developers get much lesser earnings than expected.
Blockchain technology can reinvent the advertising method by eliminating all the middlemen and establishing a new CPI campaign. Termed at CPA (Cost per attention), this campaign will let the mobile application developers directly reward the users for spending time on their mobile app (as you can see in the image below).
Blockchain technology, in the form of Smart contracts, will allow the developers to examine if the users spent required time on their app or not. Apart from this, the technology will let the users store their earnings in wallets and use to buy in-app items efficiently.
In-App Purchase
A recent report by We Are Social and Hootsuite revealed that nearly two-thirds of the world’s population uses a smartphone now. However, only 2 billion of the mobile users have access to the payment methods that are necessary for in-app purchases. Apart from this, according to the traditional app in-app process system, the user pays to the app store, deal with the bank transfer fees, credit card fraud cases, circumstances of chargebacks, and so on. Then, the mobile app developer receives the payment from app store going through the same hassle. The consequence is that neither the end users are able to enjoy the perks of in-app purchase nor app developers are able to get the best out of their app monetization strategy (check the image below). Blockchain technology will let the mobile app users use and spend their CPAt reward even in the absence of credit card and other such payment solutions. In addition to this, the Blockchain will empower mobile application developers to get 85% instead of 70% of transaction value by eliminating the middlemen (as shown in the image below).
Other Applications of Blockchain in the Mobile Industry
Apart from solving the aforementioned concerns, blockchain technology will also generate new ways to streamline the mobile application development process and cater user needs significantly, such as:
Infrastructure Protection
By gathering DNS entries on a decentralized secure platform, the blockchain technology empowers the app developers to keep the whole domain records under their control – no one can alter the entries without their consent.
End of Passwords
By investing in Blockchain app development, the app developers will be able to authenticate devices as well as users without asking for any password. Its network decentralization feature will help create consensus among the involved parties for the authentication of Blockchain based SSL certificates. This will ease the transaction process and again, boost trust among the two involved parties.
The Blockchain technology, though in its initial state now, will redefine the mobile app economy and offer the opportunities to the mobile app developers and users that they have been waiting years for. The technology will solve the three major concerns associated with the mobile economy, will build a trustable and transparent connection, and provide an open-standard platform where all could communicate and add value to the mobile world.
