Although software quality assurance is on the rise in most organisations within southern Africa, the manpower, effort and time required to implement effective regression testing makes it impossible for most companies.
This raises the need for test automation, the utilisation of specialised testing software that is able to emulate user interactions within an application. Test automation can significantly reduce the time and effort when performing regression testing, however, in most instances, the effort required to develop and maintain the automated scripts also outweigh the benefit.
The traditional problems that afflict test automation are:
1. The specialist skills required to develop and supervise automated script creation (contrary to vendor aspersions, specialist development skills are required for effective test automation).
2. Automated scripts require extensive maintenance effort because applications change frequently.
3. Manual test scripts are often created in a haphazard manner not suited to assisting the scripters in developing or maintaining automated scripts.
4. Metrics regarding automated test execution and application risk are vague in most instances.
In addition to regression testing, test automation is ideally suited to the execution of sanity tests (tests performed on the initial transfer of code into a test environment to ensure successful compilation of software code).
However, in order to apply the traditional “record and playback” or data-based frameworks, the application needs to be available before changes can be effected. Again, the effort and time required results in this type of testing being ignored.
It is with all of these traditional issues in mind that Rubric has developed a test automation methodology that eliminates these problems. “We have just registered a patent on this methodology that will take test automation to a whole new level, a paradigm shift in this area,” says John Wicks, Managing Director of Rubric.
“We have virtually eliminated the need for script maintenance on regression and sanity tests and more importantly, our clients are able to make the necessary modifications to the automated test suites prior to the code arriving in the test environment,” says Wicks.
“There are a number of test automation frameworks on the market that do not eliminate the problems encountered with test automation. Far too often a team of consultants are required to maintain and execute these frameworks at a cost that is prohibitive. Rubric aims to have their clients self sufficient within two to three months, depending on the maturity of the customer's testing team and process. Not only do our clients have an effective test automation solution, but they inherently improve their test process maturity. It is the manual testing team that becomes the resources maintaining the test automation testware. They are required to pay more attention to detail that in their existing manual efforts.
The methodology has already been proved in two prominent clients, who are already experiencing significant advantages from the implementation. They have eliminated a significant amount of overtime, completed their testing efforts with up to three days of reductions in their testing cycles and improved their effectiveness.
These clients are performing sanity tests as soon as the code has moved into their QA environment, taking 20 minutes for an activity that previously required two days (so it wasn't done!).
The regression tests are being executed highlighting several instances of defects in areas supposedly unchanged by their development team.
“We are currently registering international patents on this methodology,” adds Wicks. “We have implemented this methodology across .NET, Java and Mainframe architectures. We have used the methodology with our technology partners HP Software and IBM, having implemented it on their QuickTest Professional and Rational Functional Tester software solutions.”
Rubric is focused on the software testing and quality assurance space: test process evolution, resourcing and consulting across the test management, manual testing, test automation, performance assurance and web application security. It looks to lead in this area of IT.
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