AQuA interviews DMI
01/07/2014
App developers DMI (formerly Golden Gekko) have recently been awarded AQuA Trusted Status, in recognition of their commitment to app quality and reliability, following our assessment of their QA processes.
Here they talk to AQuA about why they feel quality is important, the difference it makes to their users, and how they've used AQuA tools to improve their own QA process...
Tell us about Golden Gekko, the apps you develop and
your approach to QA
Golden Gekko is one of the pioneers in mobile app development, and was founded in 2005. Through the years we have established ourselves as a major player in the industry providing mobile solutions to various companies such as Heathrow, Track 180, Toyota, Mango, O2, Deltek, MTG, Jaguar, ESPN, ABI and a lot more.
We are working on an Agile software development life cycle so we are following an iterative QA process.
Why is quality important to you?
We cannot afford to discount the importance of quality because it distinguishes our apps from the various and continually increasing number of apps in the market. As a developer working with large and well-known brands, quality is vital to us since the end user’s experience with the app would definitely give them an impression about the quality of the product or service provided by our clients.
One of Golden Gekko’s values is ‘we make our client successful’ so quality has always been in our system, we live and breathe quality, in order to provide an app that would help our clients to become the leader in the industry they belong to.
What difference does quality make to your users?
Quality enhances the user’s experience of the app, keeping them engaged or even providing an avenue for them to do commerce or transaction with so much ease. It encourages them to retain the app on their mobile devices, instead of abandoning and switching to the competitor’s app.
App ratings in the market will also be naturally boosted when you have a very satisfied and happy users.
How did the App Quality Alliance's testing criteria help you improve the quality aspects of your app or approach to QA?
App Quality Alliance’s testing criteria has helped us in making sure we develop a quality app - not just in terms of the functional requirements but non-functional criteria too. It gave us awareness on some benchmarks that we were not initially aware of.
We have adopted this criteria, incorporated it in our testing process and added it to our internal tool so we can execute these standard tests in all of our projects.
How did you manage QA prior to working with AQuA?
In our early years in the industry, we made sure that the functionality requirements were met by executing our Test Cases and doing exploratory testing.
Our view about non-functional requirements was very limited until we received a feedback from one of our major clients that our app would freeze when left idle for few minutes. This prompted us to do a research on mobile industry standards that we should implement in our apps which led us in discovering the Unified Testing Criteria (previous name of AQuA). We have embraced it from that day on and made sure each of our apps passes the criteria.
What benefits do you see from being in the Quality App Directory/ being a member of AQuA?
We believe this will give us an enormous edge over our competitors as this team-up with AQUA only seals our commitment to quality.
Being the first company to be given the Trusted Developer status validates our position in the industry as the leading mobile app developer and further escalates our clients’ trust that we are delivering quality apps that would be enjoyed by their target users.
What would you tell other developers about AQuA membership and the Quality App Directory?
All developers should incorporate the AQuA test criteria when coding the app to ensure they are creating a quality app.
There are a lot of ‘so-so’ applications already available in the market and we don’t want to continually increase their number. It should be all developers' ultimate goal for their app to be in the Quality App Directory so they can establish themselves in the industry as trusted developers and follow Golden Gekko’s footstep.
› back
