CTO at BRKFST
Jon Lopinot
Testing Desktop Applications
Get a team of QA experts to take a look at your desktop application’s functionality and performance. We’ll help prepare your solution for the launch, a major upgrade, or inspect the live product to ensure it meets the quality standards and expectations of your users.
Clients
Our specialists become full-fledged members of the clients’ teams soon after they join the projects. Each QA expert is as dedicated to your goals as you are. Our average retention on the QA software testing project is 3.5 years. Many clients have been working with our dedicated QA experts far more than that, and many choose to return with their new projects.
Desktop Application Testing Services
Ensuring the functionality, reliability, and user experience of desktop applications is a must. It’s the only way to guarantee that your software can withstand the fierce competition in this dynamic digital landscape. Our desktop app testing services include the full scope of quality-related activities, over ten years of experience, a vast set of tools, and domain knowledge of various industries. With this, our QA team will investigate your desktop application’s functionality, performance, compatibility, usability, and security to share actionable insights on its improvement.
Our Desktop Application Testing Services
Desktop application testing services help businesses reveal the full potential of their desktop apps. QA activities focus on different aspects of the app – functionality, performance, usability, security, compatibility, and more. We will prepare a QA strategy that includes all testing services and activities necessary for your app at the current stage. This can include all of the following or selected services.
QA is a systematic process of determining whether the software meets the requirements. In other words, it includes various testing types and strategies for evaluating software and spotting defects, ranging from UI to desktop application load testing, from test automation to QA department setup. Meanwhile, QC is what comes next – maintenance. After the bugs are fixed, QA engineers work with user feedback and monitor the app’s behavior to confirm everything keeps working as expected or detect early signs of the problems.
It is the process of checking software manually by interacting with it directly. A QA engineer prepares test scenarios, checklists, or test cases that include a list of things to check and directions on how to do it. Close inspection of the desktop application allows specialists to detect bugs and report them to developers for fixing. Manual testing is the basis of QA. It sets the background for automation and allows for providing feedback on the functionalities where the human eye and expertise are invaluable.
QA engineers can use special tools instead of running tests manually. In this case, they write scripts, which are pieces of code based on manual test cases, and set them up to execute application testing. Desktop application automated testing is much quicker and more accurate than manual inspections. It helps accelerate the QA process and release cycles. Teams can consider automated testing when they have a stable functionality – a core part of the desktop application that won’t undergo any changes – and an extensive work scope.
Traditionally, there are separate specialists who run manual and automated testing in the team. However, general testing is becoming a more frequent request. It implies hiring one “universal” specialist to be in charge of manual QA and test automation for desktop applications. This person can have a supporting role, backing up other QA engineers, or cover the testing completely on the small projects. You can learn if this option is viable for your project during a consultation with a QA company. They will share the options when they have the basic information about your software and processes.
This subset of quality assurance entails various software inspections, such as penetration testing, API security, source code review, and more. Desktop applications don’t always require all these checks. Our cybersecurity team will prepare a custom strategy for desktop application security assessment. We’ll search for vulnerabilities and prepare a plan to fix defects, strengthen the product, and prevent risks. You’ll also get an actionable strategy for countering risks and quickly responding in case of a security accident.
Quality assurance for desktop applications goes beyond just testing. In particular, QA Madness can assist you with team augmentation. If you already have in-house QA, you can still request extra help and hire QA engineers with the skills or expertise you lack. Besides outsourcing QA, we help with technical recruitment and software engineer cultivation. Technical recruiters can fill the open vacancies, completely covering the process for you. So, if you need assistance filling other technical positions, our team will gladly help you.
Let’s Start a New Project Together
QA Madness helps tech companies strengthen their in-house teams by staffing dedicated manual and automated testing experts.
Why Desktop Application Testing Must be Done?
At the heart of every successful desktop application lies a robust testing strategy. Only through quality assurance teams can ensure its reliability, functionality, and user satisfaction. By investing in professional testing, companies can define issues and vulnerabilities early in development, reduce expenses on fixes, and release a product free of critical bugs. Desktop-based application testing always prevents potential setbacks and builds confidence in the product as it reaches end users.
Verifying Functionality
Software testing allows you to make sure that all features work as intended. QA engineers verify the functionality against the requirements and report discrepancies. New software often contains bugs, but testing allows you to fix them before launch.Ensuring Compatibility
Since desktop applications are installed on laptops and PCs, ensuring compatibility is paramount. During testing, QA specialists use real devices to check how your digital product behaves on popular device models with varying screens and hardware.Optimizing Usability
UX/UI specialists pay close attention to usability when designing desktop applications. However, the final product can look, work, or feel differently than the designs. QA engineers evaluate the app from the user’s perspective to determine if improvements are required.Assuring Performance
Desktop applications may not face the same scalability challenges as web or mobile apps, but user expectations are still high when it comes to performance. It’s essential to check the app’s responsiveness, resource consumption, and behavior under different loads.Establishing Security
Digital security is paramount nowadays. Desktop application testing will help you ensure that your software is well-protected from cyber attacks and doesn’t contain vulnerabilities. You can build trust and loyalty only by keeping user data secure and confidential.Boosting Confidence
All of the mentioned aspects work towards one goal: ensuring a high level of quality for your desktop application. Meeting user and stakeholder expectations regarding features, security, and performance will keep you confident in your product and business results.Types of Desktop Application Testing
Each type of testing for a desktop application has a different role and place in the development lifecycle. Each provides feedback and insights into a specific aspect of the examined software. The testing strategy for your desktop application will most likely include these six types of testing (but not necessarily these alone).
Functional
As the naming suggests, this type of testing focuses on the functionality of your desktop app. The QA engineers will go through the features, replicating various user flows, to see if the features work as expected.
User Interface
UI tests go hand in hand with functional tests. QA engineers interact with the application’s front-end elements – buttons, forms, menus, links, etc. In addition to the functional aspect, they pay attention to visual consistency.
Compatibility
The specifications and hardware vary across PCs and laptops, and the behavior of a desktop application installed on them can also differ. During compatibility testing, QA engineers detect such device-specific defects.
Performance
Desktop performance testing estimates the scalability, resource utilization, and stability of the apps. Installed on devices locally, they still rely on the internet connection, utilize database resources, need to synchronize, etc.
Acceptance
Before launching the application, it’s necessary to verify it against the acceptance criteria. They are defined at earlier stages and indicate what behavior, performance, etc., is “acceptable” for the production environment.
Regression
Sometimes, bug fixes affect stable functionality. To ensure that code changes haven’t broken anything, QA engineers run regression tests at the end of each sprint or before releasing a desktop app to production.
Expertise
Our team consists of seasoned testing professionals. Each has strong hard and soft skills that allow them to test desktop applications with high precision and quickly integrate into the clients’ teams. The expertise of our QA engineers isn’t confined to technical aspects alone. They understand the nuances of user behavior, follow market trends, and pay attention to the company’s business goals when approaching the software. This holistic understanding enables us to identify potential issues and detect areas for improvement that aren’t directly tied to defects.
Platforms
- WEB APP TESTING
- MOBILE APPLICATION TESTING
- DESKTOP APPLICATION TESTING
- API/SDK TESTING
- WEARABLES TESTING
- ERP/CRM TESTING
Why Choose QA Madness for Desktop App Testing?
Our team strives to meet and exceed the clients’s expectations. QA engineers always prepare custom testing solutions tailored to the specific needs of your desktop application. You can be sure they understand the intricacies of your industry and business. QA experts pay attention to the business side of the software as much as to its tech aspects, sharing your ambitions and helping achieve them. There are a few things that set us apart from the competition.
Expertise
Our QA engineers have experience testing desktop applications from different industries and niches. They cover various testing types and QA services and work with numerous testing and management tools.
Flexibility
You can hire a QA expert at any stage of the development. You are also free to choose the cooperation model that suits you best. It can be a dedicated QA team, part-time engagement, or one-time testing.
Talent
Four in five QA specialists in our company are Middle and Senior QA Engineers. Each has a proven track record and soft skills necessary for independent work and teamwork. You can also hire an ISTQB-certified expert.
Efficiency
The testing can start within three days after signing the agreements. QA engineers guarantee attention to detail, accurate testing results, and excellent communication. You can scale the team quickly when needed.
Commitment
Clients often name proactivity and extensive feedback among the features they value most in QA Madness’s approach. Our specialists are committed to the quality, deadlines, and business goals of the team they join.
Security
QA Madness in an ISO-certified company. We prioritize the clients’s safety, security, and privacy. The QA team knows the value of intellectual property and confidentiality and adheres to all security norms and standards.
Our Featured QA & Testing Projects
Quality Assurance Setup and Testing for Mobile Gaming & NFT Platform
The client was looking for a QA engineer with experience in mobile testing and knowledge of the gaming industry. They had a new and custom platform and needed to set up the QA process from scratch: define the coverage, prepare documentation, and integrate testing into the workflow.
QA Process Setup and Testing for the Meeting Platform
The product was live, but the QA process was chaotic – without a clear flow or software testing specialists involved. The client sought an external audit and process setup so that other team members wouldn’t have to test the platform and severe defects wouldn’t slip to production.
Quick QA Team Scaling for Supply Chain Software Company
The company needed to expand its QA department rapidly during hypergrowth. They had high standards regarding the candidate requirements and an extensive list of responsibilities for the new team members. The main challenge was getting the right expertise while scaling quickly and smoothly.
Full-time QA Support for the Marketing Platform Providear
The QA team joined a few months into the development. The platform was new and developed from scratch. Thus, it required thorough analysis at all test levels and vast coverage. The team worked under frequently changing requirements and needed to adjust the testing strategy accordingly.
Testing Process Setup for the Cancer Research Software
The client develops innovative desktop software products in the healthcare domain. The QA engineers tested two of their projects – software that operates the laboratory devices. The company needed vast test coverage and consistent documentation standardized by their rules.
Testing of the Cloud-Based E-Commerce Solution
The company created a shipping storefront solution – a custom product that hasn’t been tested yet. The scope of tasks for QA engineers, in addition to running tests, included close analysis and the creation of a detailed functional checklist that would suit the first and subsequent test iteration.
Let’s Start a New Project Together
QA Madness helps tech companies strengthen their in-house teams by staffing dedicated manual and automated testing experts.
How We Test Desktop Application
The testing process for desktop applications can have different duration and focus. Much depends on the application’s tech stack and business objectives. Still, a standard testing flow includes five stages.
Planning
Preparing a roadmap for the testing process.
The planning stage lays the foundation for a comprehensive QA strategy, outlining the essentials and steps of the process. It involves defining the scope, objectives, and approach for testing. QA engineers also identify testing types to run, resources, timelines, tools, and deliverables.
The work begins with QA experts getting familiar with the requirements of the desktop application. They review specifications, user stories, use cases, and other relevant documentation to gain clarity on the features, functionality, and expectations. This knowledge lets them understand how to set up the testing.
Design
Finalizing documentation, setting up the test environment, and scheduling the runs.
The design stage involves creating detailed test plans, designing checklists and test cases, and preparing test data. While the planning stage is more theoretical, now QA experts get to set up the stage for testing and take care of all practical aspects. To ensure adequate coverage, the specialists write and refine the documentation.
They also identify the data required for testing various scenarios and prepare the necessary artifacts. These can include realistic data sets representing typical usage scenarios, valid and invalid inputs, boundary values, etc.
QA engineers ensure the necessary hardware, software, and testing tools are in place. They may need to configure test environments to mirror the production environment or set up virtualized environments for testing. Finally, they prioritize and schedule test cases for the most effective execution.
Implementation
Interacting with the software and reporting defects.
The implementation stage means test execution. The QA engineers carry out the planned testing activities following the plans prepared at the design stage. This stage entails what people mean by “software testing” – a close inspection of the desktop application to verify its functionality, usability, and performance.
QA specialists actively identify and document defects, reporting all discrepancies between observed and expected results, inconsistencies, gaps in logic, and anything else that seems off. They categorize defects based on severity, impact, and priority, which helps the development team set the right order for defect resolution.
Stabilization
Making final preparations before the app deployment.
The stabilization stage plays a critical role in mitigating risks. QA engineers need to ensure application stability and validate its readiness for real-world usage. For this, they run retesting and regression tests to make sure that all defects are resolved and that new ones didn’t appear during the fixing process.
User acceptance testing is often conducted during the stabilization stage. Its purpose is to confirm the desktop application is ready from a user’s perspective. The QA engineers evaluate the software against predefined acceptance criteria, provide feedback, and ensure it meets the set expectations and requirements.
Delivery
Releasing the desktop application and discussing the testing process.
The delivery stage is the culmination of the testing process. QA engineers collaborate closely with other teams to coordinate and complete the deployment. The desktop application or its newest version goes live, becoming available for real users. QA specialists can run production testing for critical functionality.
Quality assurance doesn’t end with deployment. Then comes post-release monitoring and working with user feedback. The QA team may also discuss the testing results and procedures with developers and stakeholders to optimize the process in the future. Documentation is updated, and irrelevant test artifacts are archived for reference.
If the team works in sprints, the testing process starts all over again. QA engineers plan for the next few weeks, prepare test documentation, and so on.
Clients About Us
“QA Madness has established a smooth workflow through effective communication. The team is trustworthy, efficient, and hardworking.”
“Thanks to QA Madness’s efforts, we are able to resolve technical issues and keep our platforms optimized and bug-free.”
CEO at Dexter Agency
Marc Uitterhoeve
“QA Madness was seriously professional. They listened to our needs and gave us the kind of work we expected. As a result of their efforts, we can locate a bug in the test environment, which prevents issues from entering production. I would recommend them, 100%.”
COO at Bitbull Srl
Alessandro Ronchi
"They’ve always been very professional, prompt, and available when we needed them. We’ve never had any issues or needed to go back and teach them how to meet our standards."
VP at Isadora Agency
Alex Mathias
"QA Madness has significantly reduced the number of bugs and issues in our final products. They’ve also improved our internal processes."
Co-founder of Wezz E-Commerce
Jordi Dekker
"QA Madness generated extensive feedback that developers normally can’t see. We could never have gained this insight without their thorough functionality testing services. I appreciated how quickly they conducted testing despite the high volume of work it entails."
CEO at SupportDesk
Wouter Den Otter
"They are an extremely valuable part of our extended team, and I couldn’t ask for more from a project management standpoint. QA Madness team is extremely professional when it comes to sticking to estimates, scopes, and quotes."
Co-founder of Above The Fray Design, Inc.
Noah Oken-Berg
FAQ
Informed people are empowered people, capable of making better decisions on behalf of their companies. If you have more specific questions regarding desktop applications testing in general or our approach to it, feel free to contact the team. They’ll help you gain more clarity and practical insights. Meanwhile, you can find answers to the most popular queries.
What are desktop app testing tools?
Desktop applications testing tools are software designed to assist in the QA process. These tools offer various features and functionalities. They generally focus on a single or several aspects of software – functionality, usability, performance, security, etc. The tools facilitate and streamline the testing process.
For example, tools for automated testing allow QA engineers to set up scripts to run reusable tests. This reduces manual effort significantly. Usually, specialists have this set of software solutions in mind when talking about desktop app testing tools. Yet, there are also solutions for desktop application performance testing, accessibility testing of desktop applications, and many more categories.
QA engineers may use a combination of tools to ensure thorough testing coverage and maximize the reliability of desktop applications. The optimal mix of solutions depends on the specific requirements and objectives of a testing project.
For example, tools for automated testing allow QA engineers to set up scripts to run reusable tests. This reduces manual effort significantly. Usually, specialists have this set of software solutions in mind when talking about desktop app testing tools. Yet, there are also solutions for desktop application performance testing, accessibility testing of desktop applications, and many more categories.
QA engineers may use a combination of tools to ensure thorough testing coverage and maximize the reliability of desktop applications. The optimal mix of solutions depends on the specific requirements and objectives of a testing project.
What is the difference in testing approaches between a desktop native app and a mobile native app?
Testing approaches differ primarily due to the distinctions of these platforms. This includes user interfaces, device characteristics, and usage contexts. QA engineers can use similar strategies and documentation and apply the same testing types. However, some aspects need to be adapted to account for the unique characteristics and requirements of each platform. It is critical for ensuring the proper coverage and user experience.
In practice, the difference includes the following:
- Hardware – PCs and laptops vs. mobile devices.
- UI elements and navigation patterns – more complex visually on desktop and with more interaction options on mobile.
- Input methods – traditional keyboard, mouse, and trackpad on desktop and touch-based interactions, gestures, sensors, and voice recognition on mobile.
These are just a few examples. The distinctions are more numerous. QA engineers account for all of them during the preparation of testing strategy and test case design.
In practice, the difference includes the following:
- Hardware – PCs and laptops vs. mobile devices.
- UI elements and navigation patterns – more complex visually on desktop and with more interaction options on mobile.
- Input methods – traditional keyboard, mouse, and trackpad on desktop and touch-based interactions, gestures, sensors, and voice recognition on mobile.
These are just a few examples. The distinctions are more numerous. QA engineers account for all of them during the preparation of testing strategy and test case design.
When to use desktop app automation testing?
Automated testing for desktop apps can be applied at different stages of the application’s readiness. If viable and relevant, it always extends test coverage and improves efficiency and reliability. So, automated testing isn’t tied to a particular development stage.
However, there are specific criteria teams need to consider before implementing automation testing for desktop application. Here are some situations where test automation is particularly useful, and it makes sense to invest time and resources in it:
- Frequent repetitive tasks.
- A large scope of cross-platform testing.
- Complex scenarios.
- Growing regression testing suite.
- Using CI/CD pipeline in development.
Our team can explain it in more detail. Overall, it’s essential to understand whether it makes sense to automate desktop application testing and whether you can derive the expected benefits. It’s best to consult a professional team to see if your project already meets the basic requirements to make automated testing desktop applications valid.
However, there are specific criteria teams need to consider before implementing automation testing for desktop application. Here are some situations where test automation is particularly useful, and it makes sense to invest time and resources in it:
- Frequent repetitive tasks.
- A large scope of cross-platform testing.
- Complex scenarios.
- Growing regression testing suite.
- Using CI/CD pipeline in development.
Our team can explain it in more detail. Overall, it’s essential to understand whether it makes sense to automate desktop application testing and whether you can derive the expected benefits. It’s best to consult a professional team to see if your project already meets the basic requirements to make automated testing desktop applications valid.