[Translation] How to correctly determine the size of the team for beta testing a mobile application

When you launch a new application, everyone is faced with the final stage, when you seem to have gathered everything you can into one, before launching the “next big thing” to the market. And after 2- and 3-fold verification, it already begins to seem that the product is ready and you can download the application to the store.

Here it is necessary to slow down. Are you sure that all major bugs were found and fixed? According to Ubertesters market research, 3 out of 10 mobile applications hosted in the stores contain critical errors that no one paid attention to in due time. This means that 30% of the applications now available for download are playing Russian roulette with users. As a result - all your colossal efforts can go to ashes overnight. That is why the high-quality testing of mobile applications becomes even more relevant than in the days of multi-platform support of Java-applications on push-button phones and the first mass smartphones.
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But the question arises - how many testers should be used? This is one of the key stumbling blocks faced by companies collecting a team of beta specialists. There are a large number of factors that should guide this issue. We propose to address this issue to reduce the question to the following 4 criteria:

1. Size of the project

The first factor affecting the size of the beta tattoo team is the size of the product’s CA and market share. What user rush you expect (workload), and why is your target audience interested in using the app?

As a rule, you only need about 5-10 testers for small independent projects; 25-40 testers for mass-use applications; 200 or more testers to test gaming applications. You can divide project sizes into these five categories.

Project size	Team size	Minimum required quantity beta testers
Tiny	1-2	3-5
Small	up to 20	10-15
Average	250-400	30-50
Big	500+	200+
Enterprise	1000+	500+

2. Project geography

Creating an application that is available in a large number of local markets is an extremely serious problem that can quite easily ruin a project. To avoid this fate, you need to be sure that your application:

• Fully compatible with local mobile operators and their data networks (2G, 3G, 4G or LTE);
• Correctly supports local languages ​​and dialects;
• Convenient for use by people with different cultural backgrounds;
• Works correctly on popular (for this market) devices.

Here are some typical "minor" problems that can easily spoil your life:

1. Local features of displaying the currency format (approx. Translator: full stop, comma, position of the currency sign, etc.). Many development teams easily overlook this moment.
2. Local data entry methods on the keyboard. You can get a completely unpredictable result when the keyboard files are not configured for the particular language or terrain.
3. Problems associated with the database. Make sure that when comparing the database there are no problems with the non-ASCII characters used. In addition, it is necessary to check if the Unicode format is specified.
4. Problems of rendering ASCII characters.

Work on testing such a project is not a task for one person or even a small team of specialists. To cover several geographic locations, your team of beta testers should include about 100-300 people checking the stability of the application in real conditions.

Imagine that you need to test the application, only on one mobile platform. Consider how the size of the team will increase depending on the number of target countries.

Number of regions (countries)	Minimum required quantity beta testers
one	10-25
2-4	75-100
5-10	120-250
10+	250+

3. The complexity of the project

If you want to test the functionality of your application, then, as we wrote above, you need a team of 15 independent beta testers. But if you plan to run the application in “top of the range”, with GIS integration, the use of payment systems and the use of POS-terminals, etc., then you need a lot more people.

4. Types of testing

There are many types of testing that you can use in your project. A list of some of the most popular ones is presented below.


Project managers calculate the time required for beta testing of an application, like 15-25% of the development time, without splitting it into different types of testing. This means that even if you put together a team of testers of your dreams, some aspects of your application may not be well tested. That is why you should use at least 20-25 hours for each type of testing, depending on the complexity of your project.

Note

All questions, comments or suggestions you can send to the author of the article. Source article: TechBeacon .

From the translator: while translating the text, parts of the information were removed, which in the opinion of the author of the translation duplicate the one described earlier.