Climbing
How
and why to integrate manual and automated test projects
Bob
Johnston
ScriptTech,
Inc
|
In
today’s environment of RAD and XP and market-driven internet applications development teams rarely have time
for one test project let alone two, however, many organizations separate test
automation from manual testing. This raises many challenges and issues best
addressed by integrating, not separating. Mixing manual testing and automated
test presents challenges in test scripting, execution, metrics and skill sets
and can make results reporting confusing.
I will discuss the elements of successfully integrating different
testing technologies into a single approach. There
is a direct correlation between the level of detail in Test Plan
documentation and the level of expertise needed to execute the test
plan. This creates a wide range of
situations for a testing project. At
one end of the range is ad hoc manual testing with subject matter experts (SMEs) requiring the least amount of test documentation. At
the other end of the range is Automated Testing performed by an automation
tool like WinRunner requiring the most amount of test documentation. For symmetry I will call the later subject
matter robots (SMRs). Simply
stated, the most expensive way to test is with SMEs
and the cheapest way to test is with SMRs. To
move from the most expensive testing toward the least requires that formal
levels of detail and standardization must be introduced to your test planning
and test case documentation. I will
call this level of detail “formality”.
It is easy to see that little formality is required for an expert to
manually test an application however; the ultimate formality is required to
be even partially successful with automated testing. I will discuss important concepts needed to
climb the formality ladder to go from where you are to the cheaper test
automation that everyone wants and ultimately needs to go to market with higher
quality software. I
will use a simple case study to illustrate the pros and cons of different
levels of formality and make a case that more is better and cheaper. I
will talk about several different approaches to increasing your test
formality immediately that will help you |