Rama Krishna Pagadala, Microsoft
Mobile software usage is growing quickly, and an expanding number of consumers are expecting a consistent experience when moving from PC to mobile devices and back again. One of the key factors enabling wide deployment and adoption of mobile applications is careful usage of system resources. High quality mobile applications must consume fewer system resources, such as CPU, memory and, most importantly, battery. It is crucial that design for mobile applications considers frugal and optimal resource usage as an essential aspect of application design (direct porting of desktop applications to mobile platforms is most often a recipe for failure). Knowing and understanding the factors that influence performance on mobile devices is extremely beneficial in order to plan a successful testing approach. Equally challenging is the task of measuring application performance and reporting the performance data in a useful and actionable manner.
We are going to present a case study on performance testing of the Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile application for Windows Mobile 6.x phones. We will discuss our approach to performance testing, the complexity of automating performance tests and how architectural improvements have contributed to improved application performance and better resource usage. Our automated tests measure 6 unique performance metrics for 20 different scenarios. We will also provide details on the performance metrics and tools used to gather and present this data – and how we’ve used this data to make important decisions throughout the product cycle.
2010 Technical Paper, Rama Krishna Pagadala, Abstract, Paper, Slides
