Critical scenarios

First of all, you need to build a set of the most critical/important scenarios. So, create a smoke tests with the critical basic features and divide them into phases. Also, remember to add the most frequent scenarios, those that are used in a daily basis.

Continuous integration

Implement your continuous integration since the beginning so you can follow when a scenario has broken and if you have false positives. The reason why is you need to trust on your automation, for this reason in the beginning you will need to pair the manual tests with the automation until you have confidence on your tests.

Devices

It is impossible to make your tests run on all the existent devices in the world. So, what you need to do is getting the information about what are the most used devices for your app. Exactly, this needs to follow your app, your users. If you don’t have and there is no possibility to get this data, then you can follow the most used devices in general. Focus on your app and your client in the first place.

In this category we can include the different OS’s, screen resolutions, etc.

Network

Mobiles are trick because you need to test the network, so you will need to have specific scenarios to simulate the 3G, 4G, WiFi. Remember to have the expected behaviour with poor connection or if the connection drops down and back again.

Language (Localisation Testings)

If you have a multiple language app, you also need to worry with the translation.

1. You can add the language after all the smoke tests are done, since this is easier and faster to test manually.
2. You can add a specific scenario to go through all the pages and check the translation against the database.
3. You can specify on your automation that you will run each time with a different language and add the checks along the scenarios.

My suggestion is go for a specific scenario going through all the main pages and checking the translations (2). If you go with option 3 remember, your automation will take longer since it is performing all the scenarios again but with different languages, when a simple assertion on the page without any functionality check would be enough.

Screen Orientation

As for mobile, you can have portrait or landscape, so you need to remember to add scenarios related to the orientation. You can start the tests including both of the orientations. You will need to set this in the beginning of the automation or you can have specific scenario to test the orientation for the main screens.

Emulators vs Real Devices

Another aspect for which “balance” is a good mantra is testing on real devices vs. emulators. Emulators can’t give you the pixel-perfect resolution you might need for some testing or allow you to see how your app functions in conjunction with the quirks of real-life phone hardware. But they do allow you to do cost-efficient testing at scale and are a powerful tool to have in your mobile testing arsenal. A healthy mix of real device and simulator/emulator testing can give you the test coverage you need at a reasonable price.

Be sure you are leaving room for growth, both of the marketplace and your own needs. You need to always choose the best tools and practices that fit your needs, but at the same time you need to think about what is coming in the future. So, expand your automation thinking about what could come next, and minimize the threat of having to spend more time and resources redoing or revising systems that are out of date. Choose always flexibility: Cross-platform testing tools and scalable third party infrastructure are a good example of how to keep it.