Test Automation in the Real World


Book Description

Test automation is a fantastic technology field with incredible potential. Unfortunately, the reality is most test automation efforts fail soon after they're initiated. From the many promises of ease of automation to over simplified vendor demonstrations, its easy to spend significant time and money pursuing test automation only to be left with spent budgets and unused software sitting on the shelf. If only there was a way to avoid the most common pitfalls encountered when embarking upon the promise of test automation?Greg Paskal shares some of his best insights learned as a successful test automation engineer. With over 30 years in software development and test engineering, Greg has experience first hand what works and what ends up problematic when implementing test automation across the enterprise. Learn how to take First Steps into Test Automation, ensuring you start with a great foundation. Understand the critical steps of The Automation Evaluation and how this process ensures you're automating the right things. Discover how Removing The Word Test from Test Automation opens up countless opportunities to get even greater value out of your automation tools and investment. Read about How to Hire an Automation Engineer to ensure you have the right talent to succeed in your automation endeavors.Greg Paskal has published countless white-papers and recorded podcast on the subject of Test Automation. You'll find Greg presents Real World lessons learned in a way that will help you avoid making some of the common mistakes in test automation development. Greg blends together his broad range of technical talents with his gifts and passion for teaching other in an easy to understand format.Prepare to come away better equipped for success in the world of Test Automation. These valuable lessons will apply to any test automation tool, technology and team.




Experiences of Test Automation


Book Description

In this work, over 40 pioneering implementers share their experiences and best practices in 28 case studies. Drawing on their insights, you can avoid the pitfalls associated with test automation, and achieve powerful results on every metric you care about: quality, cost, time to market, usability, and value.




Just Enough Software Test Automation


Book Description

Offers advice on designing and implementing a software test automation infrastructure, and identifies what current popular testing approaches can and cannot accomplish. Rejecting the automation life cycle model, the authors favor limited automation of unit, integration, and system testing. They also present a control synchronized data-driven framework to help jump-start an automation project. Examples are provided in the Rational suite test studio, and source code is available at a supporting web site. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.




Software Test Automation


Book Description

Describes how to structure and build an automated testing regime that will give lasting benefits in the use of test execution tools to automate testing on a medium to large scale. Offers practical advice for selecting the right tool and for implementing automated testing practices within an organization, and presents an extensive collection of case studies and guest chapters reflecting both good and bad experiences in test automation. Useful for recent purchasers of test automation tools, technical managers, vendors, and consultants. The authors are consultant partners in a company that provides consultancy and training in software testing and test automation. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




Complete Guide to Test Automation


Book Description

Rely on this robust and thorough guide to build and maintain successful test automation. As the software industry shifts from traditional waterfall paradigms into more agile ones, test automation becomes a highly important tool that allows your development teams to deliver software at an ever-increasing pace without compromising quality. Even though it may seem trivial to automate the repetitive tester’s work, using test automation efficiently and properly is not trivial. Many test automation endeavors end up in the “graveyard” of software projects. There are many things that affect the value of test automation, and also its costs. This book aims to cover all of these aspects in great detail so you can make decisions to create the best test automation solution that will not only help your test automation project to succeed, but also allow the entire software project to thrive. One of the most important details that affects the success of the test automation is how easy it is to maintain the automated tests. Complete Guide to Test Automation provides a detailed hands-on guide for writing highly maintainable test code. What You’ll Learn Know the real value to be expected from test automation Discover the key traits that will make your test automation project succeed Be aware of the different considerations to take into account when planning automated tests vs. manual tests Determine who should implement the tests and the implications of this decision Architect the test project and fit it to the architecture of the tested application Design and implement highly reliable automated tests Begin gaining value from test automation earlier Integrate test automation into the business processes of the development teamLeverage test automation to improve your organization's performance and quality, even without formal authority Understand how different types of automated tests will fit into your testing strategy, including unit testing, load and performance testing, visual testing, and more Who This Book Is For Those involved with software development such as test automation leads, QA managers, test automation developers, and development managers. Some parts of the book assume hands-on experience in writing code in an object-oriented language (mainly C# or Java), although most of the content is also relevant for nonprogrammers.




Effective Software Test Automation


Book Description

"If you'd like a glimpse at how the next generation is going to program, this book is a good place to start." —Gregory V. Wilson, Dr. Dobbs Journal (October 2004) Build Your Own Automated Software Testing Tool Whatever its claims, commercially available testing software is not automatic. Configuring it to test your product is almost as time-consuming and error-prone as purely manual testing. There is an alternative that makes both engineering and economic sense: building your own, truly automatic tool. Inside, you'll learn a repeatable, step-by-step approach, suitable for virtually any development environment. Code-intensive examples support the book's instruction, which includes these key topics: Conducting active software testing without capture/replay Generating a script to test all members of one class without reverse-engineering Using XML to store previously designed testing cases Automatically generating testing data Combining Reflection and CodeDom to write test scripts focused on high-risk areas Generating test scripts from external data sources Using real and complete objects for integration testing Modifying your tool to test third-party software components Testing your testing tool Effective Software Test Automation goes well beyond the building of your own testing tool: it also provides expert guidance on deploying it in ways that let you reap the greatest benefits: earlier detection of coding errors, a smoother, swifter development process, and final software that is as bug-free as possible. Written for programmers, testers, designers, and managers, it will improve the way your team works and the quality of its products.




Site Reliability Engineering


Book Description

The overwhelming majority of a software system’s lifespan is spent in use, not in design or implementation. So, why does conventional wisdom insist that software engineers focus primarily on the design and development of large-scale computing systems? In this collection of essays and articles, key members of Google’s Site Reliability Team explain how and why their commitment to the entire lifecycle has enabled the company to successfully build, deploy, monitor, and maintain some of the largest software systems in the world. You’ll learn the principles and practices that enable Google engineers to make systems more scalable, reliable, and efficient—lessons directly applicable to your organization. This book is divided into four sections: Introduction—Learn what site reliability engineering is and why it differs from conventional IT industry practices Principles—Examine the patterns, behaviors, and areas of concern that influence the work of a site reliability engineer (SRE) Practices—Understand the theory and practice of an SRE’s day-to-day work: building and operating large distributed computing systems Management—Explore Google's best practices for training, communication, and meetings that your organization can use




Implementing Automated Software Testing


Book Description

“This book fills a huge gap in our knowledge of software testing. It does an excellent job describing how test automation differs from other test activities, and clearly lays out what kind of skills and knowledge are needed to automate tests. The book is essential reading for students of testing and a bible for practitioners.” –Jeff Offutt, Professor of Software Engineering, George Mason University “This new book naturally expands upon its predecessor, Automated Software Testing, and is the perfect reference for software practitioners applying automated software testing to their development efforts. Mandatory reading for software testing professionals!” –Jeff Rashka, PMP, Coauthor of Automated Software Testing and Quality Web Systems Testing accounts for an increasingly large percentage of the time and cost of new software development. Using automated software testing (AST), developers and software testers can optimize the software testing lifecycle and thus reduce cost. As technologies and development grow increasingly complex, AST becomes even more indispensable. This book builds on some of the proven practices and the automated testing lifecycle methodology (ATLM) described in Automated Software Testing and provides a renewed practical, start-to-finish guide to implementing AST successfully. In Implementing Automated Software Testing, three leading experts explain AST in detail, systematically reviewing its components, capabilities, and limitations. Drawing on their experience deploying AST in both defense and commercial industry, they walk you through the entire implementation process–identifying best practices, crucial success factors, and key pitfalls along with solutions for avoiding them. You will learn how to: Make a realistic business case for AST, and use it to drive your initiative Clarify your testing requirements and develop an automation strategy that reflects them Build efficient test environments and choose the right automation tools and techniques for your environment Use proven metrics to continuously track your progress and adjust accordingly Whether you’re a test professional, QA specialist, project manager, or developer, this book can help you bring unprecedented efficiency to testing–and then use AST to improve your entire development lifecycle.




The Way of the Web Tester


Book Description

This book is for everyone who needs to test the web. As a tester, you'll automate your tests. As a developer, you'll build more robust solutions. And as a team, you'll gain a vocabulary and a means to coordinate how to write and organize automated tests for the web. Follow the testing pyramid and level up your skills in user interface testing, integration testing, and unit testing. Your new skills will free you up to do other, more important things while letting the computer do the one thing it's really good at: quickly running thousands of repetitive tasks. This book shows you how to do three things: How to write really good automated tests for the web. How to pick and choose the right ones. * How to explain, coordinate, and share your efforts with others. If you're a traditional software tester who has never written an automated test before, this is the perfect book for getting started. Together, we'll go through everything you'll need to start writing your own tests. If you're a developer, but haven't thought much about testing, this book will show you how to move fast without breaking stuff. You'll test RESTful web services and legacy systems, and see how to organize your tests. And if you're a team lead, this is the Rosetta Stone you've been looking for. This book will help you bridge that testing gap between your developers and your testers by giving your team a model to discuss automated testing, and most importantly, to coordinate their efforts. The Way of the Web Tester is packed with cartoons, graphics, best practices, war stories, plenty of humor, and hands-on tutorial exercises that will get you doing the right things, the right way.




Test Automation Fundamentals


Book Description

Test automation is an essential tool in today’s software development environments. It increases testing efficiency and makes test procedures reliably repeatable.

This book provides a complete overview of how to design test automation processes and integrate them into your organization or existing projects. It details functional and technical strategies and goes into detail on the relevant concepts and best practices. The book’s main focus is on functional system testing.

Topics covered:

    • An introduction to test automation
    • Objectives and success factors
    • Preparing for test automation
    • Introduction to generic test automation architectures
    • Design and development of a test automation solution
    • Risks and contingencies during deployment
    • Metrics and reporting
    • Transitioning manual testing to an automated environment
    • Verifying a test automation solution
    • Continuous improvement

The appendix contains an overview of software quality characteristics according to the ISO 25010 standard, and lists potential test automation applications within this context. It also provides an introduction to load and performance testing, and a sample catalog of criteria for selecting test automation tools.

This book is fully compliant with the ISTQB® syllabus and, with its many explanatory examples, is equally suitable for preparation for certification, as a concise reference book for anyone who wants to acquire this essential skill, or for university-level study.