When it came time to start testing the first three Angular web applications that were reimplemented, testing proved to be a bottleneck that placed project deadlines at risk. Completing the expected scope of testing for a single test cycle consumed 64 users from 15 different departments over two weeks. This was not efficient or sustainable—and they still had four additional applications to develop and test. “We knew, moving forward, test automation would be key,” explained the company’s Specialist of Control Technology. “The problem was that existing test automation tools, like Selenium, required development skills. We needed business-focused test cases behind SAP in addition to the functional tests already implemented by our developers. We needed a tool to write test automation without a deep knowledge of some programming language by someone with a little bit of logical understanding of the applications.”
In addition to testing their mobile apps’ major functional updates (i.e., custom code) every two to three months, the team also had to ensure that SAP updates did not negatively impact these mobile apps, which were connected to SAP. With their existing resource-intensive testing process, the company did not have the time to adopt every new SAP release. They typically held off on two out of every three updates, and focused on thoroughly vetting the impact of every third one.
To accelerate testing and significantly reduce manual test effort for their new projects, their developers’ ongoing work, and SAP’s regular updates, they needed a solution that could help to automate a complex system efficiently with their existing team of business users.
Key obstacles
- Angular web apps built for mobile apps required exceptional quality to ensure adoption and usage
- Manual testing process was disruptive and slow
- Testing cycles consumed 60 business users from 15 departments for two weeks
- Testing had to cover new applications as well as ongoing application updates
- Selenium tests were difficult to create and burdensome to maintain for non-developers
- The business domain experts faced a steep learning curve with Selenium
- Could adopt only 1/3 of SAP updates due to the testing required
