Interoperability

Picture this scene: you’ve designed a beautiful website or app that is clean and straightforward to use with a clear flow between tasks and provides all the complex functionality of your application at your users’ fingertips. This would be excellent, except it doesn’t load on their device.

There will always be a wide variety of operating systems and web browsers being used and supported at any time, with a spread of percentages from new to old and between competitors. Which platforms and versions does your application support? That’s the first interoperability question and will depend on the variety of versions your users are using. The product owner needs to trade off the technical effort of supporting those versions against the importance of those customers. You might include a version because many customers use it or because there’s a smaller number of highly important clients. Whatever the reason for their inclusion, as a tester...