Test Automation

Tutorials

MB The Challenges of BIG Testing: Automation, Virtualization, Outsourcing, and More

Hans Buwalda, LogiGear

Mon, 04/29/2013 - 8:30am

Large-scale testing projects severely stress “normal” testing practices. This can result in a number of less than optimal results. A number of innovative ideas and concepts have emerged to support industrial-strength testing of large and complex projects—some successful and others not so successful. Hans Buwalda shares his experiences and the strategies he's developed over the years for large testing on large projects. He describes the possibilities and pitfalls of outsourcing test automation.

ML Exploratory Testing Explained

James Bach, Satisfice, Inc.

Mon, 04/29/2013 - 1:00pm

Exploratory testing is an approach to testing that emphasizes the freedom and responsibility of testers to continually optimize the value of their work. It is the process of three mutually supportive activities done in parallel: learning, test design, and test execution. With skill and practice, exploratory testers typically uncover an order of magnitude more problems than when the same amount of effort is spent on procedurally scripted testing. All testers conduct exploratory testing in one way or another, but few know how to do it systematically to obtain the greatest benefits.

MM Testing the Data Warehouse

Geoff Horne, NZTester Magazine

Mon, 04/29/2013 - 1:00pm

Data warehouses have become a popular mechanism for collecting, organizing, and making information readily available for strategic decision making. The ability to review historical trends and monitor near real-time operational data has become a key competitive advantage for many organizations. Yet the methods for assuring the quality of these valuable assets are quite different from those of transactional systems. Ensuring that the appropriate testing is performed is a major challenge for many enterprises.

TD Management Issues in Test Automation

Dorothy Graham, Software Test Consultant

Tue, 04/30/2013 - 8:30am

Many organizations never achieve the significant benefits that are promised from automated test execution. Surprisingly often, this is not due to technical factors but to management issues. Dot Graham describes the most important management issues you must address for test automation success, and helps you understand and choose the best approaches for your organization—no matter which automation tools you use or your current state of automation.

TF Rob Sabourin: On Testing

Rob Sabourin, AmiBug.com

Tue, 04/30/2013 - 8:30am

Are you continually testing software the same old way? Do you need fresh ideas? Are your hum-drum tests not finding enough defects? Are your tests too slow for today’s fast-paced lifecycles? Then this workshop will help you spice things up, improve your testing, and get things done. Rob Sabourin outlines more than 150 different ways to test your software to quickly and efficiently expose relevant problems. Each is illustrated with custom artwork and explained with real world examples. Testing is examined from several perspectives—agile and otherwise.

TO Introducing Keyword-driven Test Automation

Hans Buwalda, LogiGear

Tue, 04/30/2013 - 1:00pm

In both agile and traditional projects, keyword-driven testing has proven to be a powerful way to attain a high level of automation—when it is done correctly. Many testing organizations use keyword testing but aren’t realizing the full benefits of scalability and maintainability that are essential to keep up with the demands of testing today’s software. Hans Buwalda outlines how you can meet what he calls the 5 percent challenges—automating 95 percent of your tests with no more than 5 percent of your total testing effort—using the proven, keyword-driven test method he uses.

TQ How to Actually DO High-volume Automated Testing

Cem Kaner, Florida Institute of Technology

Carol Oliver, Florida Institute of Technology

Tue, 04/30/2013 - 1:00pm

In high volume automated testing (HiVAT), the test tool generates the test, runs it, evaluates the results, and alerts a human to suspicious results that need further investigation. What makes it simple is its oracle—run the program until it crashes or fails in some other extremely obvious way. More powerful HiVAT approaches are more sensitive to more types of errors. They are particularly useful for testing combinations of many variables and for hunting hard-to-replicate bugs that involve timing or corruption of memory or data. Cem Kaner presents a new strategy for teaching HiVAT testing.

Concurrent Sessions

W3 The Pathologies of Failed Test Automation Projects

Michael Stahl, Intel

Wed, 05/01/2013 - 11:30am

Most test automation projects never die—they just become a mess and are redone. Initial solutions that start well and are full of promise often end up as brittle and unmaintainable monsters consuming more effort than they save. Political feuds can flourish as different automation solutions compete for attention and dominance. Tests become inefficient in both execution time and resource usage. Disillusionment ensues, projects are redefined, and the cycle begins again. Surely we can learn how to avoid such trouble on the next project.

T15 Innovations in Test Automation: It’s Not All about Regression

John Fodeh, Cognizant

Thu, 05/02/2013 - 1:30pm

Although classic test automation, which usually focuses on regression testing, has its its place in testing, there is much more you can do to improve testing productivity and its value to the project and your organization. Through experience-based examples, video clips, and demonstrations, John Fodeh shares one company’s innovation journey to improve its test automation practice. John illustrates how they learned to apply automated “test monkeys” that explore the software in new ways each time a test is executed.

W15 Test Automation for Packaged Systems: Yes, You Can!

Chris Bushell, ThoughtWorks

Wed, 05/01/2013 - 3:00pm

Today, most businesses are heavily dependent on packaged systems, sometimes called commercial off-the-shelf software, for large parts of their operation. Highly-customizable packages such as BMC’s Remedy, Oracle's Maxim, and many others run the show at many of the world’s largest companies. While offering many features and feature options, these packages provide rich software development environments and a “configuration” that is a highly complex programming exercise.

W16 Automation Culture: Essential to Agile Success

Geoff Meyer, Dell, Inc.

Wed, 05/01/2013 - 3:00pm

For organizations developing large-scale applications, transitioning to agile is challenging enough. If your organization has not yet adopted an automation culture, brace yourself for a big surprise because automation is essential to agile success.

T8 Better Unit Tests with ApprovalTests: An Open Source Library

Woody Zuill, Hunter Industries

Thu, 05/02/2013 - 11:15am

When a unit test fails, we want clear, expressive, rich feedback so we can quickly understand the nature of the failure and get a good idea of how to fix it. Unit testing frameworks are fantastic at running tests and alerting us to any failure. Unfortunately, sometimes (or is that often?) the details of the failure are difficult to evaluate. Isn’t there some way to make the specifics jump off the screen so we don’t have to dig through all the details? ApprovalTests library does just that.

W9 Four Crucial Tips for Automated Web 2.0 Testing

Jim Holmes, Telerik

Wed, 05/01/2013 - 1:45pm

The vast majority of problems found in web-based functional tests can be traced to a few common issues—dealing with dynamic page content, understanding the differences between explicit and implicit waits, choosing a proper element locator strategy, and understanding how to deal with setup or prerequisite data. Jim Holmes describes the basics of dynamic web page content (AJAX calls and the infamous spinning wheels and buttons) and how to create automated tests that properly deal with the main variants of dynamic content.

T21 Setting Automation Expectations: Lessons from Failure and Success

Laura Salazar, Softtek

Thu, 05/02/2013 - 3:00pm

Test automation is undeniably a key strategy for any test manager—and for good Test automation is undeniably a key strategy for any test manager—and for good reason. Test automation promises faster regression testing, higher productivity, better quality, and cost reduction. However, many organizations fail to achieve these hoped for benefits, instead facing late deliveries, misuse of expensive tools, a frustrated testing team, and lack of confidence from their managers.