Škoda achieves 99.6% test stability, accelerating bug resolution with App Automate

Škoda Auto, a major global car manufacturer and part of the VW Group, recognizes that in the modern automotive landscape, the quality of digital products is as crucial as the vehicle’s mechanical engineering. Jan Krcmar and his team in the Smart Quality department are responsible for User Acceptance Testing (UAT), serving as the final quality gatekeepers before digital products reach the customer. The stakes are incredibly high; unlike typical mobile apps, in-car systems demand near-perfect reliability from day one.

Before integrating BrowserStack, Škoda’s testing process was constrained by several critical challenges that impacted both speed and quality:

• • Physical device management: The team managed a limited pool of about 15 physical iOS and Android devices. This created significant overhead in keeping them charged, updated, and correctly configured with various OS versions to reflect their customer base.
  • Time-consuming bug verification: The single biggest bottleneck was retesting bugs on different versions of an application. To check a fix on an upcoming build or verify a bug on a previous version, testers had to manually delete the existing app, install the new one, log in, and set up test data. Jan described this as “very time consuming” and “the most difficult to deal with.”
  • Delayed bug discovery: The team’s UAT process was limited to testing only the final iteration of an app before its scheduled release. This meant critical bugs were often found at the last minute, forcing a halt to the release, a new development cycle to fix the issues, and a complete restart of the testing process. This led to irregular, delayed releases and significant time pressure.
  • Inadequate device coverage: With a small number of in-house devices, the team “couldn’t cover the whole palette of the devices” their customers were actually using, creating gaps in test coverage.

To break the cycle of delays, Škoda’s team implemented a two-pronged strategy centered on BrowserStack’s platform and a fundamental change in their testing process.

• • Automating at scale with App Automate: The team made App Automate their primary tool for all automated tests. They built a custom internal framework that connects directly to App Automate, allowing them to orchestrate test runs at any time and simply collect the results. This freed testers from manual oversight and enabled them to leverage BrowserStack’s vast cloud-based device farm to test on a precise mixture of devices and OS versions that mirrored their real-world customer usage.
  • Accelerating manual checks with App Live: For rapid bug verification and exploratory testing, the team adopted App Live. This directly solved their biggest pain point. Now, instead of reinstalling apps on physical devices, a tester can simply open App Live, upload any required version of the application, and begin testing in seconds. This drastically reduced the time spent on setup for retesting critical bugs.
  • Adopting a “Shift Left” strategy: Empowered by these tools, the team fundamentally changed when they test. They began testing on earlier, daily development builds. This allowed them to find and report bugs much earlier in the cycle, fostering closer collaboration with developers and ensuring that the final iteration sent for UAT was already of a much higher quality.

The integration of BrowserStack and the shift-left strategy delivered transformative results for Škoda’s digital product pipeline.

• • Established regular release cadence: The team successfully moved from irregular, unpredictable release windows to a stable and regular release schedule. By finding bugs earlier and speeding up regression testing, they eliminated last-minute delays.
  • Significantly higher quality builds: The “shift left” approach meant the final product iteration arriving for UAT was far more polished. Jan confirms, “The number of bugs has dropped significantly since we have shifted left in our testing strategy.”
  • Streamlined bug reporting and debugging: App Automate’s AI-powered reporting features, including video recordings and detailed logs, provided clear, undeniable evidence of bugs. This eliminated ambiguity and accelerated the entire process of root cause analysis and getting critical issues fixed.
  • Massively expanded device coverage: The team can now confidently test across the wide array of devices and OS versions their customers use, ensuring a more reliable user experience for everyone and closing the coverage gaps left by their limited physical device lab.