Software industries are doing away with silos and are moving towards bringing everything together in a single space as Super Apps- be it  functions, tools, or communication channels . This unification has demonstrated higher efficiency and growth for software companies.

In 2021, we saw a steep rise in the number of Super Apps. This was because they act as a single portal to a range of products and services. such as messaging, social media, marketplaces, and services, through various integrations that the consumers can avail within a single platform/app.

How will Super Apps impact the testing space?

While we know that super apps are superheroes and bring in a lot of benefits, like any other app, they too need to earn their customers through a good software development and testing process. To convince customers to move from their standalone apps to a super app, businesses need to offer an attractive app with strong customer appeal. 

Development and Testing these new set of apps will be more challenging as testing these apps will be a continuous process as we suspect that there will be a continuous flow of new features, updates, and addition of small programs within the app more frequently than these happen in stand alone apps. You will also need to take your testing game to the next level in order to test the new capabilities and functionalities that the super apps bring to the table. 

How can we be prepared for the super apps testing trends?

With the super apps, the software testing process will become even more critical. Quality analysts and testers will have to analyze the app, systems, and software control flow to ensure no defects are present. Apart from the fundamental testing that includes functionality, usability, compatibility, and performance testing, the following points are also crucial for test coverage:

• Integration – Testing teams need to test super apps for seamless interaction with multiple other offerings of 3rd party vendors that are integrated within the super apps.
• Data privacy and security – Certain regions like Europe, the US, and Canada are more protective of individual information than others. The more data we collect, the better the offering is with  super apps. This requires high-grade security standards for protecting the data collected with the assurance of high-level encryption and compliance with other security policies.
• Automation – Frequent releases and testing will need continuous and repetitive testing in place for good quality. Enabling better automation of various testing tasks, incorporating automation frameworks into the app development life cycle, and exploring no/low Code platforms to accelerate automation testing efforts are some of the points that we should keep in mind.
• Impact on other systems/services/programs –  The impact the testing of super apps will have on other modules or features will have to be continuously monitored during the development and testing phase, what if a service is down ,or another mini program is down how will this impact other functionalities, these kind of questions needs to be asked throughout the development and QA cycles.