An automated approach to quality software
The move to online systems has been enthusiastically received by ‘consumers’. They offer access anywhere, anytime from a variety of devices and with no software to download.
However behind the scenes it’s not easy for the people developing and delivering the online service. In the last 5 years the number of web browsers and versions has soared. Increasingly people are accessing services across multiple screens – desktop, tablet and mobile.
It all adds up to a massive growth in the ‘environments’ that software needs to be tested for. The demands on Test Analysts continue to soar and it’s become impossible for people doing manual testing to keep up with the growing demands in a timely fashion, which ultimately impacts the bottom line.
At ZOAK Solutions we experienced these challenges over several large multi-year projects. Due to the mission critical nature of these systems we could not afford to sacrifice quality, nor could we afford to let the testing load grow or it would jeopardise our schedules and agility.
To address this we made some changes in the way we operate. We implemented Continuous Integration (more on that another day) and embraced Automated Software Testing.
Now 4 years later we’ve developed a proven automated testing framework that can be applied to any web application technology, assuring your applications critical functions. The ZOAK Solutions Automation Framework has been built on Selenium – a proven open source, robust platform that is only growing in popularity.
The benefits of automated testing
- Schedule tests to run nightly
- Generate test reports automatically
- Comprehensive testing – execute consistent, thorough tests against all supported environments again and again
- Simulate real world conditions with simultaneous virtual users
That’s just a start. Embracing automated testing has transformed team morale and productivity, and significantly improved the ongoing quality of our software.
A Test Analysts best friend
Unlike factory robots, automated testing doesn’t replace people. Instead it helps Test Analysts to be more productive and consistently thorough across the entire software development lifecycle.
We’re delighted with how ZOAK Solutions’s Automated Testing Framework has helped our projects. We’ve now delivered multiple large-scale, complex, online systems to production with no critical or blocker defects.
