The majority of companies and industries are dependent upon IT.
There are companies that:
1. develop software for others
2. buy software and configure it to meet their needs
3. build their software to support their own business
4. use a mix of 2 and 3 as appropriate
The iterative nature of software development means that companies that are developing their software realize the importance of test automation, and have devised a test automation approach to suit.
This story is often different for companies that are buying and configuring the software to suit their business need. Valuable software typically evolves, with more functionality added, performance improvements applied, and adaptations to address changing business standards. Medium and large organizations may have in-house IT teams that validate new releases and configurations of software. These teams are aware of the need to test new functionality and to regression test to ensure that business needs are satisfied. They have the same frustrations with manual testing that companies developing software used to experience, with the choice between manual effort slowing the time to the business benefit of the new release, or taking risks that could have a negative business impact or adverse effect on reputation.
We are frequently approached and asked, “How do we start”? There is cynicism of tool vendors, with all singing and dancing solutions, and of consultancies that start with a simple question and then bring in the big guns to address the newly created business transformation project. Perhaps a pragmatic approach is the answer.
A few facts:
Companies that buy software typically use a range of underlying technologies, of which they have little internal expertise. Technology agnostic solutions mean that it is not necessary to learn a range of technologies, some knowledge of one is good enough.
Developers are happy to wade through code, non-developers are far happier having an abstract view of what is being tested. Model-based approaches provide this abstract view and allow non-programmers to develop a structured test automation solution that is simple to understand and easy to maintain.
Object interaction (e.g. button clicks), synchronization (waiting for the application to respond) and validation (checking the correct response) are the mainstays of test automation. These are simple to explain and understand.
The biggest hurdles to getting going are the install and the basic concepts, external help can accelerate these aspects.
Once a few basics are understood, and a successful approach is adopted, e.g. automating action block by action block, then record and playback aspects of tools can be there just as aids, e.g. recording a step will describe the code that the tool would generate.
The most successful adoption is achieved with training, being shown (learning what good looks like), and then doing, with support to check approach, handle new challenges, or to ask advice.
IntelliQA has been helping companies overcome the challenges described for years. We offer tooling and enablement to get you going, followed by support to help you evolve. We can also provide the full test automation solution, and then hand this over such that you can run it yourselves, with support as required.