Today’s world is dominated by technology, as everything is done digitally. We use modern mobile devices to conduct various tasks, such as streaming media, running a business, and interacting with others. Mobile applications are powerful technologies that enable us to carry out all of these tasks while on the go.
Online banking apps are the leading fintech industry due to the growing demand for online financial services. They are market leaders because the bank offers a visually appealing and intuitive mobile banking app that users highly favor. Now, physically visiting a bank is no longer necessary to take care of particular tasks like depositing checks, transferring money, checking balances, etc. Users can more easily accomplish these tasks from their smartphones using a mobile banking app.
However, because users of apps expect their online banking to be as simple and easy to use as their in-person banking experiences, mobile app testing has become essential for organizations looking to enhance the usability and performance of their banking solutions and apps.
Creating a mobile banking app is the same as creating any other app. However, banking apps’ ease, speed, and safety are crucial features. This is because they deal with transactions and sensitive financial data that require the greatest security, reliability, and user experience standards.
Due to these complexities, development and QA teams must approach the testing process with extreme caution and attention to detail. As a result, development teams are using Continuous Integration (CI) to deliver code more quickly by utilizing its advantages. Developer teams can deploy features, upgrades, and security patches more quickly because of this approach. The guiding principles of continuous integration (CI) allow mobile development teams to deploy code changes more often and reliably in the context of modern mobile app development.
This article will teach us how to combine CI with mobile banking features successfully. Before discussing what CI is, let’s first examine what CI is and the advantages of integrating CI with mobile app banking.
What is Continuous Integration?
Developers using Continuous Integration (CI) for custom mobile application development push and regularly integrate their code changes into a common repository. Every code update is tested in a continuous integration pipeline and integrated with the current code base. High-quality mobile app banking features can be delivered more quickly and consistently with the aid of CI.
Continuous integration of mobile apps is often practiced occasionally in a day and up to several times a day. This promotes making minor adjustments more regularly instead of making major changes less frequently.
Following the research and design stage of a typical development process, developers work on discrete features on different branches and use Pull Requests (PRs) to integrate their work into the main branch. The team carefully reviews each commit, makes builds, and runs tests to ensure code quality and prevent committing or merging broken code into the main development branch. In addition, this requires more time and is less productive in terms of feedback, bug fixes, and enhancement. This is when mobile app CI comes in handy.
When a commit or PR is made, a continuous integration (CI) tool can be used to start a pipeline to build and test the application, verify that the code changes are error-free, and assure code quality. Developers can receive rapid feedback on the status of their code update as a result of this expediting the process and doing away with the requirement for manual testing. Continuous Integration (CI) enhances mobile app quality and fosters smooth teamwork by locating and fixing bugs before its release.
In short, a continuous integration of mobile apps usually consists of the following steps:
● Compiling the new code with the branch’s existing source code together with any necessary libraries and dependencies to produce the build.
● Performing automated checks and tests on the compiled code, including static analysis, unit testing, and integration testing. This keeps the application stable and helps verify the compatibility of the code.
Benefits of integrating CI with mobile app banking
● Mobile app banking can benefit from continuous integration (CI) by boosting collaboration, decreasing the likelihood of coding flaws, increasing user satisfaction and retention, and improving code quality and consistency. Automated tests are used to verify the application’s security, performance, functionality, and other high-quality features.
● Continuous Integration (CI) builds undergo increased testing, which enables developers to identify and address issues in a build at an early stage, automate testing and delivery procedures, offer feedback and accountability, and provide regular and secure updates.
● CI can also aid in frequent and reliable deployments. The simplified deployment procedure expedites the transmission of changes to end users, facilitating quicker and better feedback in response to shifting market demands.
● The Continuous integration for mobile apps can increase development productivity and guarantee a more robust app development process. This provides the developers more confidence to submit changes regularly and frequently release reliable apps.
● The app’s scalability and stability are enhanced by performance and load tests, which are a component of the continuous integration process. This frees up app developers from worrying about maintaining the production environment and lets them concentrate entirely on building code. This makes it possible to release high-quality code more quickly.
Tips for successful CI integration with mobile app banking
Since mobile applications are always changing, regular testing and upgrades are necessary to maintain their functionality and quality. Development techniques like continuous integration (CI) automate the creation, testing, and distribution of mobile applications. CI can speed up feedback delivery, cut down on errors, and save developers time.
However, there are a few things to keep in mind to integrate CI with mobile app banking services efficiently and get the best results.
Leveraging the appropriate tools
Choosing the appropriate tools that meet requirements and preferences is necessary for integrating CI with mobile app banking features. Several tools are available for mobile continuous integration (CI), including Bitrise, Firebase, Jenkins, Travis CI, CircleCI, and GitHub Actions. Different kinds of mobile apps can be tested with the assistance of third-party services.
Every tool has distinctive characteristics, advantages, and disadvantages. For example, Bitrise integrates with multiple platforms, tools, and frameworks; Jenkins supports multiple plugins and configurations for mobile app development, testing, and deployment; and Firebase offers a variety of features for these purposes.
As a result, it’s critical to evaluate them and choose the one that best fits the project’s needs in terms of expertise, cost, and availability. Compatibility of the tools with the language, framework, mobile platform, and testing tools should also be considered.
Setting up the environment
Setting up the environment correctly is another crucial step in integrating CI with mobile app banking capabilities. This includes configuring the deployment location, testing devices or emulators, CI server, and code repository. Determining the workflows, causes, pipelines, and the automatic job sequences that initiate upon a change in the code is also crucial. It is also important to ensure that the environment is scalable, secure, and easy to monitor and troubleshoot.
Creating robust tests and code
To make sure the app meets the requirements and functions as intended, Mobile CI depends on the quality of the code and tests. Write code that adheres to the language’s and the framework’s best practices and is clear, readable, and maintainable.
Additionally, think about creating efficient tests that address the app’s main features and functionalities and any potential problems and edge cases. Depending on the requirements and objectives, use a variety of test types, including unit, integration, UI, and performance tests.
Implementing a thorough and automated testing strategy
Develop a thorough, automated testing plan that addresses functional, performance, security, and unit testing. Include relevant teams and stakeholders in the CI process as well, and communicate freely and consistently.
Adopting a scalable and modular architecture
The key to effective continuous integration (CI) efforts for mobile app banking features is to have a scalable, modular architecture that allows for frequent, independent updates. Setting up measurable, clear objectives and measurements and routinely checking them is key to maximizing the benefits of continuous improvement.
Optimizing the build time
While mobile continuous integration (CI) might expedite the development process, ineffective build time optimization may result in delayed outcomes. The time required to create, test, and launch the application is known as build time, and it should be as short as feasible without sacrificing quality.
One can utilize incremental builds only to perform affected tasks, selective testing to execute only the relevant tests, parallelization to run many tasks simultaneously, and caching to save and reuse prior task results to optimize build time.
Collecting and evaluating feedback
Feedback is crucial to improve the app and address any potential problems or bugs. Mobile continuous integration (CI) can assist in gathering and evaluating input from a variety of sources, including stakeholders, users, and test results. Therefore, constantly use tools like dashboards, reports, logs, and analytics to gather feedback systematically and regularly.
Additionally, use indicators like test coverage, code accuracy, efficiency, accessibility, and user satisfaction to carefully and honestly analyze the feedback. Include the feedback in the CI process and features; it may also be used to prioritize activities and goals and to inform decisions and actions.
To make code merging and collaboration easier, a system for managing versions and a branching approach should be implemented. Lastly, the CI pipeline should make use of AI-powered test orchestration and execution platforms like LambdaTest to offer scalability, stability, and security.
Utilize the LambdaTest platform to seamlessly integrate CI with mobile app banking features
To create mobile banking apps that perform well, it’s critical to evaluate them from the perspectives of usability, scalability, stability, and security, in addition to providing valuable features. Banking apps must function well and be more secure because they handle millions of transactions. In this case, continuous integration (CI) can be quite beneficial since its tools can expedite app testing and deployment.
The main goals of continuous integration (CI) are to boost productivity and automate application delivery, which relies on reliable automation and a stable set of tools. Modifying the CI pipeline may impact the development process or toolkit. A substantial intellectual commitment and a challenging learning curve may be involved in developing and maintaining a continuous integration pipeline, which also entails high expenses for tools, infrastructures, and resources.
As a result, it is ideal to apply continuous integration (CI) in a development environment that has all the required resources, infrastructure, tools, and maintenance. One such platform is LambdaTest, which easily interfaces with well-known continuous integration systems like Travis CI, JIRA, Jenkins, TeamCity, and CircleCI.
LambdaTest is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform that allows running effective manual and automated testing of desktop and mobile applications at scale. The platform enables testers to simultaneously run real-time and automated tests across over 3000 scalable and reliable test environments, browsers, and real devices to receive quick feedback.
With LambdaTest, developers can design, organize, test, and deliver applications more efficiently and fast because of its integration with the continuous integration pipeline. To put it briefly, the LambdaTest platform enables developers to set up, manage, operate, and maintain an effective continuous integration pipeline quickly. This will assist in early bug detection and fixing and expediting the delivery of new features to end users.
Conclusion
The world of mobile app development moves quickly and dynamically, necessitating the regular delivery of reliable and high-quality apps to users. Development teams may test apps at every stage of the application development lifecycle with the help of continuous integration.
It lowers the possibility of risk exposure, ensures that the app remains reliable and safe, and assists in identifying and addressing possible issues before they affect the development process. It also helps to shorten delivery times, decrease errors, and improve the quality of the code.
