Hi, I'm Daniel Gannon. Technology executive, entrepreneur, business strategist, traveler and budding guitarist. This blog is all about sharing ideas on business and adventure. Enjoy!
The Classic Achilles Heel in Test Automation
One of the classic challenges in testing, and the Achilles heel in many a test automation program is the difficulty in keeping test cases current as changes are made to the applications under test. While some applications remain reasonably static, there are others that are much more change-centric and often extremely complex.
As the pace and velocity of business accelerates, this change-centricity increases, putting more pressure than ever on application owners and QA professionals to test faster/test better.
Often the fallout of this pressure to test faster creates unintended deterioration in the test automation assets. This happens quickly and generally results in redevelopment of the test assets, as it is often easier to do so than to unravel the changes that must be made to a test case to make it useable again.
Hardly what most of us would call intelligent automation!
Test Case Half-Life
This chart illustrates the natural degeneration of test cases through successive application changes:
Patented Solution: Evergreen AutomationTM by TurnKey
TurnKey was recently awarded a patent for our innovative application-aware capability that we affectionately call “maintenance mode,” a capability that solves the test case maintenance issue for good.
By detecting the changes in the application when they differ from the test component in use, graphically showing the changes and then automatically updating not only every test case affected, but also the data management assets associated with the test cases and test sets, we create an “Evergreen Automation” process designed to keep test assets and your as-built application in sync at all times.
This is why we call it “Evergreen Automation.” It allows you to keep your test assets fresh and up to date at all times. We do this for all of your applications, including those mission critical enterprise applications that run the business.
Our patented, application-aware capability can have a profound effect on the value of test automation, eliminating the extraordinary, largely manual process of test maintenance. This allows users to focus their energies on what really delivers value; more frequent test cycles, broader and deeper testing, more rapid deployments and ultimately big improvements in application quality.