Software Test Automation
A Fast Start to Automated Testing
Test automation has the potential to radically improve productivity and reduce the reliance on manual testing.
However, even though software test automation has been available for over a quarter of a century, the practice still has many skeptics, and the biggest barrier to adoption remains the level of maintenance required to sustain it. Achieving just a moderate level of automation coverage requires considerable investment of budget and resource. With increasing software development complexity and more and more IT departments taking on an agile approach, traditional test automation has become too cumbersome for most to sustain.
Why is Test Automation so Cumbersome?
"I have recently purchased TestDrive-Assist for manual testing and TestDrive for test automation from Original Software. Both solutions are brilliant and I am using them very successfully. Relatively cheap, intuitive to use, visual scripting as opposed to programmatically scripting, self-healing scripts - absolutely brilliant!"
Peter Cliffe,
Global Solutions Quality Assurance Manager,
Unilever UK Limited
Traditional test automation systems originated in a world that moved at a much slower pace, where waterfall developments were the only game in town and no-one attempted to tackle fast moving, mission-critical applications - they knew that the technology simply couldn’t keep up.
These products all get their capabilities from powerful scripting languages; something that sounds good in a presentation, but has become a horror in the real world, requiring highly skilled and highly paid test automation engineers to communicate with the complex and mysterious test automation tool.
Worse still, the script library took weeks and months to develop. This was something that was rationalised as OK, because you could write the scripts in parallel with code development. The truth was somewhat different as the script required knowledge of how the developers were naming the visual components – something that was neither consistent nor predictable. Because of this, the code-based tools reverted to a ‘record’ mode to establish the initial script, which made them only usable once the application was complete. This was more practical, but now the automation coding effort couldn’t even commence until sections of the code were complete and stable.
Achieving Test Automation Quickly
Now it would be foolish to dispose of the entire concept of automation purely based on what came before. What would be more pragmatic would be to recalibrate our expectations and remind ourselves of excellent potential benefits from test automation, if only the capabilities were delivered in a form usable by all.
By freeing automation from the burden of a script based on code, we can begin to imagine a solution that could be used by subject matter experts and not limited to frustrated developers, a solution that could adapt to changes in the application under test, an intelligent solution that inherently understood the application under test, removing the need to develop logic in addition to the validation itself.
The exciting thing is that modern automation goes a surprisingly long way towards addressing these needs.
Modern Automation
The exciting thing is that modern automation goes a surprisingly long way towards addressing these needs. TestDrive-Assist is our solution that delivers practical and immediate benefit, enabling the transition from manual testing into automation quickly and easily.
TestDrive is our Automated Software Quality (ASQ) solution that addresses the above challenges to achieve rapid automation. It is designed to test browser and legacy applications, as well as GUIs, including Java™, Ajax, Flex® and Silverlight®. TestDrive and TestDrive-Assist form a powerful solution to accelerate quality processes and increase test coverage.
