Sunday 11 May 2014

Measuring The Success Of Test Automation - An Insight

Evaluating the success of test automation has always been a challenge and an important issue too. Objectives of test automation are always vital, as they ultimately determine the direction a team of developers is headed in. It also determines the end result of all the funding as well as the assessment of any particular project and last but not the least, the probability of success or failure in meeting the intended mission objectives. One of the mainstays of measurement of success is the AROI or Automation Return on Investment, which is at times misconstrued as the benefits or advantages of automation. Let us discuss how to evaluate the success of test automation.

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Previously, a crude process of evaluation was followed. It included measurement of the percentage of test cases that were automated. However, this at times turned out to have a fair bit of loopholes, and was soon discarded and a new method was adopted.

Before we get into that, let us at first know why we need to do test automation? The main objective of test automation measurement is to improve the test efficiency so as to save time along with effort, along with a substantial amount of costs at the end of the day.

Now what are the most appropriate ways of measuring the success of automatic evaluation of software? Rather than measuring the percentage of evaluation cases to be automated, the essential metrics of automatic evaluation should put more emphasis on the savings that can be acquired from successful execution of those automatic evaluation cases in terms of time as well as efforts.

The entire process is though easier said than done. Actually, correctly calculating the time along with effort saved through execution of automatic evaluation is an extremely complicated process. For accurate calculation, it is imperative to know the amount of time as well as the efforts it takes for execution of each and every manual test case. Besides, once those figures are available, it becomes necessary to map the data to the actual scripts of the automatic evaluations that are being executed, followed by a holistic calculation of all the parameters of the evaluations.

In order to reach a concrete conclusion through this entire process, what is needed is a sizable amount of time, effort as well as a seamless collaboration with the team that executes manual tests.

However, one might not forget that there is always the presence of a certain amount of tests that are not yielding the desired results in spite of being automated. Hence, in order to bring this percentage into consideration it is imperative to change things into Value Metrics of Test Automation.

This new process of evaluation has been pretty effective, albeit the strenuous effort that is needed to collate all the required information. However, the test management tool used needs to be appropriate and should be such that it will readily support capturing the relevant information, aggregating the same and returning the desired metrics alongside the trend. For this, MS Excel is a wonderful tool that comes in handy.

However, just as a footnote perhaps it will not be inappropriate to mention here that in order to get maximum ROI for automatic evaluation, the following parameters need to be maintained:

The scope of the Automation will have to be determined in details before getting off with the project.

The appropriate automation tool needs to be selected on the basis of the fact whether it is appropriate for the assessment. Do not select tools on the basis of its popularity.

The framework needs to be appropriate. The standards for scripting will have to be maintained in a proper way. The scripts, comments as well as the code indentation to need to be uniform, and finally, exceptions should be handled adequately.

Selection of the right automatic evaluation tool, assessment process as well as a testing team is extremely important factors when it comes to a successful evaluation. Moreover, when it comes to successfully evaluate the achievement of these tests, maintenance of these parameters properly also makes the evaluation easier as well as quicker.

You can hire testers from top certified automation testing company in India who can help you accomplish testing within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide outsource automated testing services. If you would like to hire automation testers from us or would just like to speak to one of our expert software testers, please reach out to us at Mindfire Solutions.

Friday 2 May 2014

Is Demand for UFT growing in Today's Market?

HP Unified Functional Testing (UFT) software is used widely by developers across the world to automate testing process. The software application makes it easier for the QA professionals to carry out a variety of testing including functional testing and regression testing. The testers can further write test scripts using Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript) scripting language. The scripting language simplifies the process of manipulating the objects and controls of the application and specifying a test procedure. The integrated development environment (IDE) provided by the application helps testing professionals to write and validate test scripts more effectively. With more and more organizations automating their testing process, the demand for HP UFT software is increasing at a steady pace.

Why Automate Your Test Process with HP Unified Functional Testing Software

Effective in Testing both Front-end and Back-end of the Application

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HP has designed the Unified Functional Testing software application as a comprehensive testing platform to test both GUI and API. The combination of GUI testing and API testing makes the software useful for testing both front-end (User interface) and back-end of a software application. The QA professionals can use the GUI testing method to evaluate the front-end of the software application, whereas the back-end of the application can be tested using the API testing method.

Simple and Easy-to-Use

Often organizations have to provide training to software developers and testers while adopting a new technology. Despite being effective in functional testing and regression testing automation, UFT is still simple and easy-to-use. So your workers can learn its features and navigation option easily, and start generating reports and validate the user-friendly results. Further, UFT can be combined seamlessly with Test Management Tool (Hp-Quality Center). So the users can easily schedule tests and monitor the test results.

Facilitates Data-Driven Testing

HP has further designed the UFT software with support for data-driven testing. So it allows the data to be stored as a data table to be reused for another project. The QA professionals even have option to implement data-driven testing as a Microsoft Excel workbook, which can be accessed from the UFT application. The application further supports two distinct data table types, i.e., local or action data sheets and global data sheets.

Quick Scripting Process

The amount of time required for completing functional or regression testing is impacted by the time required to write test scripts. HP UFT allows testing professionals to write test scripts using VBScript. In comparison to object oriented programming languages, VBScript is easier to learn and code. Thus, the UFT scripting can be completed by the professionals within a shorter span of time.

Enhanced Code Reusability

Like other powerful test automation tools, HP UFT also enables QA professionals to save the test scripts, function libraries, objects, components and application areas. It comes with a centralized quality control solution known as ALM. The developers can store the test scripts, function libraries, objects and components with the with the ALM project. The details stores with ALM project can be shared with other QA professionals, and reused for other testing projects.

Extensible to Several Development Environments

Despite being used by QA professionals to automate both web based and windows based client-server applications, HP UFT still does not support all operating systems and web browsers by default. But the testers have option to install corresponding add–in to make the software compatible with a particular development environment. The application comes with three default add-ins, i.e., ActiveX, Visual Basic and Web. But users can still load corresponding add–ins to use UFT with Java, .NET, SAP, Oracle Apps, Delphi, Web Services and Flex.

HP further allows organizations to use Unified Functional Testing software either the seat or concurrent license. The seat license is specific to a computer on which the UFT software is installed, whereas the concurrent license is a network based license that enables multiple users to use the application at a time. So an organization has option to choose the licensing according to its specific needs and budget. If you are planning to hire services of offshore software testing companies, you must evaluate them to see if they are sufficiently agile or not!

We provide QA testing services. We have expert testing team with 100% certification ratio. To hire software quality assurance tester from us, please reach out to us at Mindfire Solutions.