Getting more from codeless test automation with strategic test management

In the race to release software faster, test automation is undoubtedly a critical element of success. But the programming expertise required to create and maintain test automation scripts is scarce, while many teams within a larger business end up independently choosing their own specialized tools or frameworks. Without a single, centralized view of quality, testing efficiently and effectively across the business and its applications becomes cumbersome, making it harder to release with velocity and confidence.

In this post, we’ll cover a few practical recommendations for using test management to help test automation go further in an organization, including:

• Extending existing automation efforts across teams and projects
• Focusing test automation expertise on business problems by reducing maintenance
• Centrally managing test automation across teams and tools
• Improving visibility across all your testing

In short, automating more individual tests is only part of the solution to moving faster – scaling, repeating, and orchestrating test automation as part of a larger testing strategy will help you get more out of your automation investments.

Tip #1:
Extend existing automation efforts across teams and projects

To scale test automation across an organization, one of the easiest things teams can do is enable others to test with existing assets. Sharing and reusing automated test cases enables more teams across the business to test sooner and release faster. Sharing test cases across the business also has the added benefit of reducing test maintenance for the entire team.

To extend test automation across multiple teams and projects, you’ll need a test management solution that can act as a centralized test repository across your organization. Test management tools vary widely here: some are designed to keep projects entirely separate, while others enforce a copy-paste-edit model that can result in a test maintenance headache. Tricentis qTest allows businesses to share a central set of test cases to reuse across the organization, with granular access permissions.

Tip #2:
Reduce test maintenance with a codeless, end-to-end approach

Reducing test case maintenance and utilizing your resources more efficiently can drastically cut costs and propel your business efficiency forward. While script-based testing approaches are good for certain testing types and projects, they can leave dangerous gaps in your ability to test end-to-end across the enterprise. Relying only on script-based testing can also hinder your ability to scale because it leaves different line-of-business employees — as well as testers without the requisite programming expertise out of the testing game.

In order to reduce the dependency on programming skillsets, organizations should incorporate codeless test automation technology to empower testers and business analysts of all skill levels to deploy test automation for more productivity and democratization. Investing in end-to-end, codeless test automation solutions like Tricentis Tosca can help you extend test automation to new areas, without the maintenance required for script-based tools. When changes occur to the application under test, business and IT teams can use Tosca’s unique model-based approach to auto-update impacted test cases through a centralized model, leading to reduced expenditure on maintenance.

Tip #3:
Centrally manage test automation for efficiency and scale

Automating additional manual test suites will only take you so far – but being able to kick off or schedule that automated process for the right time, in the right environments, across multiple machines, regardless of the tools and frameworks you are using – will make that testing more efficient, with far less effort from the team. Test orchestration augments the impact of test automation and minimizes overhead by allowing you to ensure efficient execution of automated testing across projects, teams, and tools.

To execute test automation at scale, and with efficiency, you’ll need centralized control of both automated tests and the machines on which they run. This may happen as part of your delivery pipeline, but many still need to run standalone automated regression tests on a regular basis. Solutions like qTest Launch can help these teams centrally manage, scale, and accelerate their automated testing by integrating with the automated tools of their choice – as well as with other tools across the delivery pipeline, from Agile planning to CI/CD. With qTest Launch, you can centrally manage and maintain all of your test machines and configurations and execute tests across frameworks and tools from a single interface.

Tip #4:
Improve visibility across all your testing

Scaling automated testing helps businesses accelerate their releases, but it’s unlikely that any organization will automate the entirety of their testing. Even with careful investments in test automation, most businesses will need exploratory or user acceptance testing to catch errors that normal functional testing approaches won’t. Automated testing – not just functional testing – needs to be placed in context of the complete test strategy, alongside any manual or exploratory testing that’s used in the organization.

Centralized test management and analytics lets teams gain a complete view of testing throughout the development lifecycle, regardless of the tools or approaches they are using, so businesses can assess overall testing effectiveness and make data-driven, strategic decisions about where to scale test automation to improve test coverage, velocity, and release confidence. Solutions like qTest manage automated, manual, and exploratory testing in one place, and include powerful analytics and reporting to help you make better, more strategic decisions, faster.

Scaling codeless test automation to release faster with confidence, using qTest and Tosca

Tricentis Tosca offers enterprise, end-to-end test automation that anyone can learn and use, while Tricentis qTest is a test management solution that offers centralized control and a unified view of quality across the business. As part of the Tricentis continuous testing platform, Tosca and qTest sync test cases and execution artifacts out of the box, and work together to help you scale and accelerate automated testing across the organization.

To learn how you can build a long-term, sustainable test strategy by combining strategic test management and codeless automation, join us March 17 for a webinar with TechWell: A two-pronged approach to scaling test automation.