STAREAST 2016 - Test Automation
Wednesday, May 4
Anti-Patterns for Automated Testing
Patterns—proven, repeatable solutions to common situations that occur again and again—are commonly used in development and to a lesser extent in testing. In addition to patterns, various anti-patterns have been discovered. These are common responses to recurring problems that, while promising, are actually counterproductive. Hans Buwalda describes a set of such anti-patterns that he commonly sees in automated test design and that he feels inhibit scalability and...
End-to-End Automated Testing: Lessons from Zombieland
With the proliferation of mobile devices, browsers, and IoT devices, each with its own eccentricities, performing end-to-end automated testing is starting to feel like navigating a zombie apocalypse. You need to fight off the zombies but lack the right tools. You need a set of rules to live by. You wish you had a buddy who would teach you all those rules because alone, you feel like you’re being eaten alive. On the surface, the rules are simple—Limber Up, Don’t Be a...
Fostering Long-Term Test Automation Success
In today’s environment of plummeting software delivery cycle times, test automation becomes a more critical and strategic necessity. How can we possibly keep up with software delivery's explosive pace while retaining satisfactory test coverage? How do we keep the reins on costs and reduce risk? Carl Nagle maintains that the long-term solution is a greater level of “sustainable” test automation. The Software Automation Framework Support (SAFS) method separates test...
Thursday, May 5
Turbocharge Your Automation Framework to Shorten Regression Execution Time
Asad Faruqui and Moni Mau say that their old regression automation used to take three-to-four days of execution time as they ran against different browser versions, locales, and currencies. They wanted to make the automation framework more efficient so features could go to market faster. Symantec explored Selenium Grid which could reduce the run time by offering some parallelism, but Asad and Moni wanted even more efficiency. They explain how they created both a...
Combine Test Automation Code with Product Code: The Good, the Bad, and the Lessons Learned
At STAREAST 2015, Chris Loder spoke about the automation framework that he and his team built at Halogen Software. At the time, they had just moved the test automation code into the development code base so that everyone in R&D was able to use it. One year later, Chris returns to...
The Selenium Grid: Run Multiple Automated Tests in Parallel
The Selenium Grid unleashes the full power of Selenium to run multiple automated tests in parallel across multiple platforms. Brian Long demonstrates the use of an open-source framework developed at Virginia Tech to get up and running with a Selenium Grid in about an hour. He begins by discussing the Selenium Grid configuration and then progresses to the installation of the framework. Starting with a clean Selenium installation, Brian uses Git to retrieve and install...
Don’t Be Another Statistic! Develop a Long-Term Test Automation Strategy
Choosing the appropriate tool and building the right framework are typically thought of as the main challenges to successful test automation. However, even after careful tool selection and advanced automation framework construction, many find long-term success elusive. Lee Barnes discusses the key strategy components that must be in place to avoid becoming another test automation statistic. Learn the importance of—and techniques for—assessing your organization’s...