Author: Bill Echlin

Sometimes with test automation tools it’s difficult not to jump to the conclusion that they aren’t suitable for the job you want them to do. Usually this because of the steep learning curve and the difficulties associated with working out how best to approach the problem you are trying to resolve. One of the most important aspects with any tool is it’s ability to identify objects in the application you’re trying to automate. When you can’t identify the object you’re stuck. With Test Complete you may come across instances where it won’t recognize the control or window in your application. This is because Test Complete may not have in-built support for those objects. So you may think it is impossible...

Record and playback features in test automation tools have a bad reputation. Why? When you purchase the automation tool it says on the tin “record and play back”. And for most tools this is exactly what they do. Yet many users seem to expect far more. Let’s be clear though, the tin does not say “record and play back with 4 man years of development which will deliver you a world class framework that will make you look like a god in the realm of software test automation”. As users our expectations for this technology are set far to high. Most test automation tools have this feature and pretty much all of them implement this very well. When you look...

For the purpose of this article on test automation tools we are going to focus on Test Complete and creating a script to cover multiple different browser types with multiple windows. Now on the surface this can look very complicated. With Test Complete though we can use parametrization in name mapping to simplify this. What we need to do is first create the script for just one browser type (say Internet Explorer). After that we’ll implement parametrization in the name map and we’ll be able to execute the same test script for different browser types. The process we’ll follow for this is outlined below: 1. create a new project 2. add Internet Explorer as a tested application 3. record the...

For many, integrating your test management system with your automation environment is a key aim. Whilst Quality Center integrates with UFT and QTP out of the box, many have other integration requirements. In cases where you might be looking to integrate TestComplete automated tests with Quality Center the following set up and execution instructions may help. A few things need to be addressed as part of the initial setup. A couple of things on the TestComplete client side and a couple of things on the Quality Center server. For TestComplete and the TestComplete client machine you need to … 1) install the HP QC Connectivity Add-In on the TestComplete client machine. This utility is provided by HP and can be...

If you are ever in London, I highly recommend Kew Royal Botanic Gardens. It’s perfect on a warm Spring Sunday evening. Miles of stunning trees and plants in bloom. Amazing colours, rolling landscapes, parakeets, and great food. I particularly recommend the treetop walkway. For a relaxing day out, you can’t beat it. Except, that is, when you have a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old with you. That removes the relaxing part from the day. Fun, yes. Relaxing no. So last Sunday evening we’re sitting outside on the veranda of the Orangery restaurant at Kew having a lovely evening meal in the open air. A little old lady wanders over. She asks me if the two children at the table are mine....

Have you read Quiet by Susan Cain yet? In it Cain refers to studies that show just how much peer pressure influences our decisions — a concept that has some interesting ramifications for us as software testers. We’re all exposed to peer pressure. Even as testers we are subjected to peer pressure. Peers in development roles question the defects that we uncover. Our project management peers question our test plans. In an attempt to overcome issues with peer pressure, an advertising man named Alex Osborn invented brainstorming. He believed that creativity was stifled by the fear of judgment from colleagues. So he sought to remove the threat of criticism from teamwork. Brainstorming has just 4 rules:        1. Don’t judge...

With the release of the 9.8.1 version of QAComplete and ALMComplete SmartBear software have included two new key test management features. The first is a versioning feature that allows you to select which version of a testcase is used in a run. The second is an assignment feature that allows you to assign at the test level. Lets look at both features in a more detail. Versioning QAComplete has always had the capability to automatically increment the version of a case as it’s changed and then use the latest version in new runs. With this new release more of this underlying versioning capability is exposed to the QA engineer to give them more control. You now have the ability to...

These days a large part of successful project management and test management depends on the integration of tools. Tools that are used across different business functions need to be integrated to provide visibility and traceability across the business. For example the Dev team and QA team might need different tools for test management and agile development. Yet the team as a whole need to be able to report on progress and quality across both functions. Yet with testers raising defects in one tool and developers looking at defects in another tool it’s difficult to keep track and keep in sync. In this sort of situation integration of development and QA tools makes sense. We’re going to take a look at...

I read an article the other day that questioned if collaboration actually impacts productivity. As software testers in the age of agile we’re encouraged to embrace the concept of collaboration as something that will improve the way in which we work. We’re pushed to collaborate within the test management process and other business processes. And we’re pushed into working in groups in open plan offices. There’s probably some merit in this argument that collaboration might result in reduced productivity. In an open plan office we’re constantly interrupted by other people. We find it easier to waste time chatting with people. Getting things done in dedicated and focused work sessions has become more difficult. Some blame this on our desire to...

I was asked by a colleague the other day to define what test management is. Having spent 20 years practicing it, I was surprised to discover that I couldn’t come up with a short pithy one liner to describe it quickly. With a bit of thought I came up with this though… “The discipline of controlling and tracking the process of testing from the development of test cases through to the reporting on execution status”. It’s not as easy as you might think to come up with a simple definition. The domain of QA is massive in itself and this aspect tends to impinge on just about every aspect of QA. So whilst a one sentence definition is nice to...