Название: Test Automation: A manager's guide
Автор: Boby Jose
Издательство: BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT
Год: 2021
Страниц: 276
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf (true), epub
Размер: 10.1 MB, 24.4 MB

The practice of test automation is invaluable for modern software testers. Done well, it significantly increases software testing's efficiency, effectiveness and coverage and is essential for continuous testing and continuous delivery. This comprehensive guide covers test automation in\-depth, from the benefits of test automation to defining, developing and implementing a test automation approach that is fit-for-purpose, to planning, designing and executing test execution scripts and frameworks. Real-world scenarios, activities and exercises are included throughout.

Software testing today faces numerous challenges, including ever-shrinking release schedules, a lack of knowledge on business priorities, the misunderstanding of development methodologies, complex technologies, changing expectations, delays within implementation, a lack of awareness of non-functional requirements, insufficient resourcing, time and cost pressure versus quality, and the unfamiliarity of testing conventions. Most of these challenges become a risk and later a reality soon after the software solution development commences. Software products or projects try to mitigate the above issues in various ways, such as through planning and replanning, adding more people to the team or additional budget; however, testing is one of the key areas to be viewed as a mitigation to address the delay in delivery due to the above issues.

The testing team is often asked to reduce the test effort by following a risk-based approach, optimising testing stages, descoping testing types, merging testing phases and so on to compensate for the delay in the overall delivery schedule. Experienced and seasoned test managers are aware of these challenges and often plan at the beginning to address them. Test managers are often pushed against the wall to reduce the testing timeline in order to absorb delays in the planning, design and implementation phases. Test automation is one of the preferred ways of addressing these challenges by minimising the impact on overall quality. Test automation is to automate the end-to-end testing process and activities, including tracking and managing the different tests. Automated testing is performing specific tests, such as performance testing and functional testing, via automation rather than manual means.

The section 11 describes the key features of some leading programming and scripting languages used for test automation, with the aim of introducing you to different programming languages that can support the test automation need for your product or organisation. Automated testing requires proficiency in programming languages and automation frameworks. The first step is to ensure that the SUT, test automation tool for automation and the programming skills in the test team are aligned. The commonly used programming languages to assist in test automation and their key characteristics, which are covered in this section, are:

• Python
• Perl
• Java
• C# (.Net)
• Ruby
• PHP
• javascript