Transforming Testing with Automation

One of our clients in the Energy and Environmental sector was a prime candidate for QA automation services. The application itself has a handful of entities, each semi-dependent on another. Imagine these entities as “wood,” “door,” and “house.” You need wood to create a door, and doors to create a house. Thus, any testing of a house requires the setup of wood and doors.

The Testing Process

By implementing automated tests and tools around the first entity (wood), we could harness those tools for manual testing of the next entity (doors). As we performed manual testing on doors with the help of these tools, we simultaneously began to write tests and develop tools for doors. This set us up for the next entity in the testing process, and so on.

This approach ensured that we exercised the application constantly, both automatically and manually. It proved to be an efficient method to identify bugs as the development process progressed.

Building a Comprehensive Test Suite

We continued this process until we had tests covering each entity. This provided us with the capability to set up and automate complex end-to-end tests. With automated tests now in place, we could start to fully automate the business logic spanning many parts of the application.

Additionally, we developed a complete set of regression tests. These tests were crucial to ensure that each new deployment to our testing environments didn't introduce any regressions. If regressions occurred, we were able to report them quickly.

Efficiency in Testing

All in all, we established about 200 tests that took roughly 15 minutes to run. If a tester had performed those same tests manually, it would have taken at least a day to go through each test in the detail that automation was checking. This workload was further multiplied by the three browsers we were targeting.

This efficiency meant that development could release iterative changes quickly. We were able to regression test the entire application after each small change. This readiness positioned us for a production release at nearly any time.

Tools Built for Success

The tools created for the tests also proved to be significant time savers for manual testing. Moreover, they were used to assist development in verifying imported data into the system. While we were implementing automation in tandem with manual testing efforts, we gradually built our suite of tools. This approach built our coverage as we tested.

By offsetting the upfront cost of developing these tools, we incorporated them into our overall QA effort for the project.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the journey towards complete QA automation serves as an example for others in the Energy and Environmental sector. It demonstrates the benefits of a structured approach to testing. This process not only enhances efficiency but also ensures the quality of the application. By investing in QA automation services, businesses can achieve faster time-to-market, cost savings, and improved overall quality.

Automated testing can be a game changer. For any company considering automation, it is worth exploring how it can streamline their workflows and improve testing outcomes.