Automation Framework Is as Important as Tools

In today’s highly competitive IT landscape, test automation e-bike has come to the forefront as it helps ensure quality and faster time to reach market. With Agile and DevOps giving a huge boost to test automation for continuous delivery, companies often wonder what tools they should use to automate specific processes in their IoT, mobile or embedded work. Since it’s impossible to find a single tool to meet all your test automation needs (such as automating your legacy, mobile, desktop and web applications), most companies use a combination of open source and proprietary testing tools. But it’s important to remember if you fail to choose the appropriate test automation framework, your chosen tools won’t be of much help.

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Test Automation Framework vs. Test Tools

Test automation is often taken as a technical topic, where the focus stays on a variety of things – from programming language and specific test automation tools to evaluating the log files, deciding on the framework, its attributes etc. Though these are needed, what matters more is to get your test automation initiatives approved and funded by the management. So, how efficiently you can automate tasks and the returns you can generate from such initiatives should be the starting point. So, test automation is actually a business topic. If it can’t generate enough returns, automation would be a waste. Yet, many businesses start the test automation journey with unrealistic expectations without thinking if it would justify the investment or can really cut down the time and manual effort for testing. So, test automation needs to begin as a business topic and the technical aspects will come to the picture naturally though both need to have a fine balance.

Be it tool specific frameworks like the Selenium framework (which has Selenium WebDriver, Selenium IDE and Selenium grid as key components), project specific frameworks (to support definite application test automation requirements), best practices framework, or keyword driven frameworks (helpful for staff with less coding experience as coded keywords like Login, Click, TypeText etc let them write and support automation scripts), your chosen framework should be easy to maintain, expand and perpetuate. It should also let you organize and standardize your automation assets better by driving them with a solitary framework and help you notice the results these resources and different tools produce in a single format. While your framework should be application- and tool-independent, you have to pair your tools with a well built framework or else, you will miss out on the multiple benefits of test automation.

When selecting tools, a big debate is the choice between open source and proprietary tools. While open source tools like Selenium are increasingly becoming popular for browser, mobile and web-based apps, commercial test tool vendors like HP QTP are used for legacy and ERP apps. Since you will need specific tools for specific stages of your automation, you should look for the ones that best fit your needs and can be run on your automation frameworks. While it’s important to check if your selected tool works on different test scenarios, supports the team (testers, developers etc) and is priced competitively, you should also check its support (vendor support or community support for open source tools) and extensibility. Since test automation may often need you to code or roll your own work-around in case your chosen tool doesn’t support a particular kind of object in your application, checking if the tool can be extended, the programming language it uses etc are important.

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At times, you may have to use “wrapper classes” around specific frameworks to “fake” it’s your own framework in use, which would save time and effort as you will have to rewrite just some special test cases and not all. Such wrapper classes can come handy when support for your automation framework ceases to exist. But by focusing on what tests are actually done using the framework instead of how the framework functions, you can get a workaround to speed up things.

You can do automation with just the tools but can’t with just an automation framework. That’s because the tools do the actual testing for you, giving you the right inputs. On the other hand, automation framework gives you just the necessary help to carry out testing. With frameworks built in line with your project structure and organization standards, which involve creating set of standards and roles of test execution like selection of test cases, execution flow, test management tool integration, report generation etc., you get help with developing your test automation metrics. With automation framework, you can create new features that your chosen tool doesn’t support originally, or bring together multiple tools with single automation framework like Sikuli and Selenium. The bottom-line is that both your test automation framework and test tools are important if you want to pack a punch in your testing initiatives.

Skills needed from QA and testing professionals to drive Agile and DevOps programs

In today’s competitive business landscape, QA and testing have become the two biggest driving factors when it comes to attaining success in terms of increasing customer satisfaction, performance, security and shorter time-to-market. With the growing adoption of agile and DevOps, an emphasis on predictive analysis and intelligence-led testing, and increasing automation of QA and testing methods, a new set of skills are required from QA and testing professionals.

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Test data and test environment setup expertise:

As TEM is slowly maturing, the core systems created to support testing are increasingly becoming smart. For testing environments and data, analytics and self-managing capability are increasingly employed. With the growing need of agile and DevOps, test data management and test environments are likely to become automated and virtualised. Thus, QA will need to have skills to ensure automation of their test cases and almost 100% code coverage, together with creating standardized test environments and automating the deployment of their QA boxes. Skills related to automating and aligning pre- and post-testing tasks, cleanups etc with Continuous Integration cycle will also become important for QA and testing professionals.

Virtualization expertise:

From API testing and service virtualization testing to evaluating data center virtualization and cloud testing, provisioning virtual test environments, automated and continuous monitoring of such environments, end-to-end test automation and reporting, QA and testing professionals in today’s agile and DevOps scenario need to have virtualization skills.

SDET:

This is required to maintain the quality of the software and to develop high quality, performant code. Thus, QA and testing professionals must have adequate software quality skills and development skills to evaluate and mitigate risks.

Non-functional testing skills:

Though a wide range of non-functional tests conducted to check the quality characteristics of a system or component, the most important ones that QA and testing professionals should possess are the ones related to performance and security testing. If a system fails to perform well under a certain workload or functions poorly (which would be revealed during performance testing) or is prone being hacked or give access anyone to the data and other features (which security testing can point out), hurrying to market it will be of no use.

TDD or BDD:

In TDD, unit tests are written primarily and then the adequate code is written to make them pass while BDD allows a developer and a product owner to sit together and jot down the pending specs. The collaborative approach in BDD works well when it comes to focusing on the features provided for an end-user.

Knowing internal applications:

With a solid grasp of internal application, QA and testers can have a look at the source code to identify which unit of the code isn’t behaving properly and can eliminate the extra codes that can trigger hidden defects. It also ensures that maximum coverage is performed when writing a test scenario. Good understanding of all dependencies will the professionals identify production level impact of a module and from where to start testing.

Ability to choose and work on test automation tools:

Test automation has come a long way with the advent of different test automation tools which allow performing complex tasks much easier that were simply unthinkable in the past. While companies need to consider investing in next-gen automation tools, QA and testing professionals need to adopt these advanced tools and techniques to upkeep the pace of deliveries and to be on the same page with a continual stream of updates. Few of the test automation tools that have changed the test automation scenario are Selenium, Test Complete, Appium, Calabash, Cucumber etc.

Ability to address business challenges:

QA and testing teams today don’t just need to prevent defects in production but are also expected to contribute to business growth and deal with business challenges. Some of the key business challenges they are often entrusted to handle are:

Ensuring positive end-user experience
Maintaining quality of the end-product
Balancing quality with business survival requirements
Delivering best effort as a part of the development team to deliver top-quality application

To do it, these professionals need a different level of reporting on QA and test results.

Mentoring developers and selves:

It’s evident that developers aren’t ‘excellent testers’ by nature and thus they don’t possess the skill to excel at testing. Developers focus on positive scenarios while testers identify the weak points. In most organizations, developers lack real-user perspective and end-to-end knowledge. However, testers can change this scenario by mentoring developers by guiding them with their ‘blind spots’ and by providing them with end-user scenarios. At the same time, testers should possess some development and coding skills themselves as it would help them imagine and relate to the code structure.

Taking strategic decisions:

As quality is becoming more and more stringent, challenges are getting heightened as well. Late engagement and inability to take strategic decisions related to testing and quality issues are providing ramifications including inadequate in-depth analysis. This triggers difficulties including identifying the proper level of test types together with test depths. As an outcome, preparation of test data, selection of appropriate automation technologies etc are remaining under-considered leading to quality issues and inadequate throughput of newer functionalities. To overcome all these, QA and testing professionals must be allowed to take strategic decisions rather than only focusing on testing. Thus, they need to have the relevant skills for such decision making.

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Conclusion

Experts predict an intelligence-led QA approach will radically change the QA and testing scenario that relies heavily on manual decision-making, preparation, and execution at present. With its experienced QA and testing team that offers comprehensive testing in today’s agile and DevOps scenario, TechArcis make sure to address the emerging challenges effectively and give you your money’s worth. Whether you are facing the skills shortage in your in-house testing and QA professionals or just need your components or systems thoroughly checked before taking them to market, simply contact us for high quality testing solutions within your budget.

Top 7 Mobile Security Threats in 2022

By end of 2017, there will be approximately 4.77 Billion mobile users around the world. Not just humans, tangible devices like cars, TVs, Remote controls, Refrigerators, etc. will also be connected to the smartphones. Infact, according to a report by CISCO, there will be more than 50 Billion connected devices by 2020. Even enterprises are not shying away from adopting this trend with 725 of them already permitting BYOD. While this does ensure that the world will be a truly connected network, but then this increase in adoption of mobility also has its own downsides in the form of privacy and security threats.

With growing hacking and phishing attacks, mobile devices have become an easy target for security breach, which is an alarming threat for the enterprises. Corporate data and technical information are at risk as they can be easily attacked. Enterprises need to identify these threats and implement policies to deal with them at the earliest. Today we outline 7 such threats that can prove to be headache for the IT departments in the enterprises.

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1. Data Leakage

The most important risk, and a critical one too, that enterprises generally face is the safety of their data. It is a well-known fact that all the private, confidential and technical data and information is stored on private servers, which are accessed by the employees on a regular basis. Attackers therefore have an easy target as they can employ some illegitimate strategies that will allow them to enter into the server and copy all the saved data. They can also employ codes to erase the data after having saved them on another server, which becomes an even more concerning problem to the enterprise.

According to StaySafeOnline.org, the first step is STOP. THINK. CONNECT. “Today’s mobile devices are as powerful and connected as any PC or laptop. Take the same precautions on your mobile device as you do on your computer with regard to messaging and online safety” reads one of their reports.

2. Malware

According to a 2014 cybersecurity report, Malware infections affect nearly one-fifth of businesses. Malware can be referred to as any malicious program that causes harm to your smartphones. Malware can be a piece of code, an application or a virus package that causes damage to both data and device. These disrupt operations, allow illegal data mining and in some cases give access to your device on a whole to the attackers. All your private data, key passwords and corporate mails may be at risk because of the malware. This can have ruinous results and harm the company and its servers on a large.

3. Spyware

Spyware is a yet another familiar technique that is used to obtain personal and organizational information from mobile devices. Trojans, adware, and cookies are different resources from which such information is gathered and sent to another entity without having any legal consent from the user. When these spyware applications send information over smart phone networks, they actually open a large information gap that is challenging and tricky to overcome in a corporate environment.

5 Mobile Application Testing Goof ups
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4. Unsecured Connection

It is a known fact that Wi-Fi setups provide better speed and connectivity when compared to mobile data services and hence it is the most preferred choice by many. But then not many are aware that unsecured Wi-Fi networks are potent threatsthat can steal information and data from your device. These free Wi-Fi networks attack your device by gathering all your registered cookies and saved personal information on various sites and accounts. To avoid such problems, always connect to only known Wi-Fi networks and also ensure that they are well protected by employing different security checks.

5. Illegitimate Permissions

Many-a-times users simply give away all the permissions that are requested by the app without questioning the need for some unrelated permissions. They do not realize that all their personal and corporate data may be at risk because of risky permissions that shouldn’t even have existed in the first place. Enterprises can choose to highlight some of the data hungry apps and intimate their employees to avoid installing and using such apps on their smart phones.

6. Phishing attacks

85% of organizations have faced phishing attacks at least once. Mobile devices connected to data services and Wi-Fi setups are always under the scanner, especially while entering details like server passwords, bank accounts, and other such confidential information. Mobile security for such services is not as strong and reliable as for desktops and hence they can be easily targeted by phishing agents. Enterprises should make sure that they do not promote using mobile apps while carrying out financial transactions or for transferring sensitive data.

Source - Wombat Security

7. Improper Session Handling

In order to facilitate ease of access on mobile for transactions, many apps use “tokens” for simpler and faster processing. Tokens aid users in such transactions by allowing them to avoid multiple authenticity checks that may be requested by the service to confirm their identity. All the gathered data is stored in the form of “session-data” and is temporarily saved on the server. If sessions aren’t closed properly or if there is any issue during the transaction then this may provide a chance to the attackers to plagiarize data for their own needs.

We at TechArcis are committed to creating secure mobile solutions that can help enterprises in adopting mobility sustainable. At TechArcis, we provide in-depth security testing of mobile applications and devices to identify the potential vulnerabilities. Get in touch with one of our testing experts to arrange for a free consultation.

Why your mobile app testing ISN’T working the way you want?

Ever heard of the photography app French Girls? Well, it’s one of its kind mobile applications which allow you to convert your pictures into caricatures with help of professional artists. Awesome, right? But why are we talking about this particular photography app instead of sharing some gyaan on mobile testing? Here’s the reason – French Girls recently tested its user interfaces using A/B Testing , as a result of which its user activation rate went from 25% to a whopping 66.5%! All this spelling high returns for the company. While this exemplifies the importance of integrating testing as an integral part of the app development process, and most companies acknowledge the same, not all business stories are about success.

Many a times mobile app testing doesn’t turn out as expected. Why? Challenges, and plenty of them. Some have to do with the way testing is carried out, while others are a result of superficial factors like new devices, market competition etc. Let’s analyze some of these challenges, which result in the failure of companies on the mobile platform.

New Versions of OS and Devices

Mobile application testers face a continuous challenge from the new devices that are launched in the market every now and then. All these devices are different; they have different screen size, performance levels, hardware capabilities etc. There are more than 20000 different models of mobile phones available in the market and the number is only going up. It is very difficult for the testers to ensure that the app performs to the best of its ability on each of these devices.

The same holds true for operating systems. While new OS versions are predictable in their features and functioning, frequent updates can be hard to keep up with. Most updates fix bugs, but at times a new feature is also introduced. This means the developers and testers get yet another feature that needs to be integrated with the mobile app and tested thoroughly. To add to this, is the user behavior. You can find some users still stuck on the older version of the OS while the new one is already in place. This means, you need test for both the versions, leading to further complications in testing.

New Products that Interact with the App

As the world moves towards ‘smart’ living, the idea is to turn mundane everyday products into ‘smart’ ‘connected’ devices, a concept we dearly known as the Internet of Things (IoT). As this concept becomes mainstream, existing products will connect to the internet and go digital. While there will be aplenty opportunities knocking at the door, this can cause much anxiety to developers and testers alike. As anything and everything becomes ‘smart’ and hundreds of thousands of different devices connect to the internet (and one another), there will be a lot more things to be tested. Testing the Internet of Things can be overwhelming, if not done correctly.

Apart from IoT devices, there are the wearables like fitness bands, watches, VR glasses etc. These too run on the mobile platform – communicating and collecting data from a mobile source. You need to ensure that your mobile app is ready to interact with the wearables. And since the technology for these little wonders is still evolving, it can add to the complexity of testing your application.

A New Feature by a Competitor

When Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart implemented app deep linking for Google search results , which landed the customers directly to the Flipkart app from SER, Amazon was quick to follow the suit. After all, in times where mobile accounts for 70-80% of sales, Amazon couldn’t suffice by just leading on the web. As they say, sometimes you need competition to bring out the best in you.

App Deep Linking Introduced by EBay Source – Blogspot

Every business wishes to get to the top and the best way for that is to integrate new features in the application that can render better user experience. There is a constant struggle to find innovative ways to develop new features and add new styles so that your product can be at par with your competitor. Often this results in you getting a step ahead in the competition. However you need to test the performance of new features to be foolproof and take care of all the related aspects.

New Industrial Development

Users and their requirements keep changing over time. Your product needs to adapt constantly with features as well as style to meet the customer requirements. Sometimes, the mobile app needs to change with the changing season or be in tune with the trends.
Secret Escapes, a flash-sale luxury travel company, enjoys a customer base of more than 10 million users, and are known for introducing user-friendly features often. However, as a policy, they do not make changes without testing them thoroughly. They test all updates and features carefully to optimize and personalize customer acquisition , as a result of which their mobile signup rate has doubled.

How to Ensure You Ace Mobile App Testing Every Time?

Now you know what might be going wrong. So let’s try and look out for possible solutions that can help you conduct app testing smoothly.

Automation

Manual testing often results in slowing down of the process of launching the product. The solution then is to automate the scripts so that the testing process is much faster. When you use a tool that tests the app over multiple devices at the same time, the productivity goes up. However, before you automate tests, it is important to discuss the same with all stakeholders and set expectations right. Automation facilitates broader and deeper testing by allocating test resources to highest value tasks. Besides, you should also know where automation can prove to be most effective. Ideally you should choose tests which have high return for the effort put in automating them. For instance, time consuming or error-prone tests like tests with significant waiting time, data-driven tests etc., high frequency tests, scripted UI tests, and Overnight load/stress tests that log results and restart automatically.

Real Devices Over Device Emulator

The device that you test for is in front of you and the results of what works and what does not are in your hand (literally!). The basic features like connection speed, data handling, login etc can be tested in a jiffy. With mobile app, device testing makes it easy to understand user experience on different models and how significantly user experience varies across devices. Thus it makes perfect sense to test on real devices. However, if you are a start-up running on budget, you may be tempted to use emulators as cut down on the cost of device procurement and give results faster; emulators are often free or come for a low monthly fee. Besides emulators also have the advantage of enabling to extract data and sent reports in real time helping testing team with easy access. But the issue with emulators is that they aren’t foolproof.

Cloud Testing

Cloud testing allows testers to set up a testing lab within the business or on a cloud resulting in an access to different devices as well as OS at all times. It also enables testers to work in different time zones and places across the globe resulting in a continuous testing process. Hence the testing process is made much faster.Investing in your own mobile test lab is a good idea but it’s an expensive affair. We can leverage on the various external testlabs or explore public or private cloud labs available in the market. To list few:

Private cloud:
Xamarin, Sauce Labs
Public cloud:
Perfecto Mobile
AWS – Device farm.

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Continuous Integration Platform References

A good continuous integration platform is a boon to testers. With platforms like Jenkins, they are able to connect every step in the process right from development to testing to launching. A fault in any process is detected immediately and the tester is intimated about it. The server too stops to halt the further flow of the fault. Unlike the traditional testing method where the tester has to spend time to search for the bug, the CI platform helps saves time. When integrated with the mobile testing tool, the entire process is taken to the next level with you getting a clear picture of exactly where the fault lies.

Launching a mobile app soon? How are you planning to go about the testing process? Let us know in the comments section below.

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Keeping Your Software Testing Abilities Relevant

“Quality at speed” is the new mantra in the digital age, and user experience is key. The software and product development processes have already changed to better fulfill customer expectations by embracing agile and DevOps in order to adapt to new requirements

“Quality at speed” is the new mantra in the digital age, and user experience is key.

The software and product development processes have already changed to better fulfill customer expectations by embracing agile and DevOps in order to adapt to new requirements. What can testers do to keep up with their development peers?

I have some ideas about what testers can learn, what skills we can add, and what processes we can start doing in order to continue delivering quality at speed today, tomorrow, and further into the future.

Today

Adopting test automation, if you haven’t already, should be your first step, particularly if your development team is agile. Automation allows you to accomplish regression testing and new feature testing quickly within the current agile sprint. The tools and methodologies you use should pull requirements from the development team’s user stories and acceptance criteria so that you can build the automation framework and scripts in parallel to development, saving time and ensuring quality.

To keep pace with development, talking to your team about adopting agile testing and using test automation is something you can do today.

In the Next Year or Two

This will be when DevOps implementation becomes mainstream for testing. DevOps is primarily about building a technology layer for implementing continuous integration and continuous delivery, which needs test automation to happen. With a firm foundation in test automation already, testers can start exploring continuous testing made possible with DevOps.

Beyond

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are on the horizon. As an extension of test automation, we can expect to see more use of testing bots, particularly for finding bugs, functional testing, and click-through pass/fail tasks.

Some people think that with the advent of AI, machine learning, and testing bots, human testers will become obsolete, but in my view, there is a huge opportunity for testers willing to take on new challenges. Start playing around with writing a bot to validate tests so you become familiar with quality engineering. You can also start delving into exploratory testing and user experience, because there won’t be a substitute for human testers when it comes to determining usability.

The role of testers is changing, and quality will become everyone’s responsibility. Staying current with the trends and keeping an eye on the future are important to remaining a relevant software tester today and tomorrow.

Best Practices of Test Environment in the era of DevOps, Cloud, and Agile

Unlike the past where development and testing teams were often huddled in the same room or same office, the present era is seeing an increasingly diverse workforce that often coordinates from geographically dispersed locations. In fact, almost 60% of agile testing teams are located in different regions, separated by large distances. This poses a huge problem for standard testing methods as utilizing and managing geographically dispersed resources and making them work to their optimum is a tough task. This is where cloud testing can help. With most modern businesses depending heavily on software and applications, there’s a rapid demand to deliver efficient, glitch-free end products. The cloud has emerged as a viable alternative for such a scenario. Businesses working with geographically dispersed teams can leverage the cloud to bring distant resources together and make them work, as and when needed, without any need of investing in setting up and running private networks between offshore and onshore offices or for handling proprietary communications infrastructure. This method of working doesn’t just deliver great time savings, but also removes the embedded costs of running.

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Current Test environment requirements

In the ongoing era of testing where each and every aspect of a software and application is tested, often simultaneously with multiple test environments, several criteria need to be taken care of to get results. Various important conditions which cannot be overlooked are OS versions, RAM memory size, CPU blocks, channel capacity and the different device drivers, to name a few. Another important hardware requirement is ease in portability of testing environments. Talking specifically of the test environments, there is high assortment in tests and thus testing environments. This makes it essential to have realistic replica and high fidelity of the test environment.

Many companies still use multiple physical test environments and assets for completing rigorous availability testing, integration testing and destructive testing. However, this may cause operational problems and cost overruns if the test environment’s capacity isn’t exploited fully. At times, testers have to share test environments, which slows down test cycles and makes finding bugs an increasingly difficult task, thus resulting in lower quality software. In case different teams try using the same set of resources simultaneously, logistic challenges and internal conflicts may occur. That’s why it isn’t feasible to keep multiple physical test environments.

How to have multiple test environments

Wrapping up the assortments of testing environment in one testing box was once considered to be an impossible undertaking, but the concept of Virtualization and Cloud has made it possible. Now a days Virtualization is widely used for testing. Testers now get an implicit environment, execute tests on it and share the bugs and issues quickly with the developers.

Virtualization not only allows creating n-number of user configurations and later on choosing the suitable configuration at each stage, but also allows potentially incompatible applications to be tested and tried out easily. Virtualization is usually done through two methods or cloning, i.e. liked cloning and full cloning. But this amazing technology also comes with its fair share of problems. For one, it requires special hardware to initiate few specific configurations. Equipment conflict is another hurdle in the race.

Cloud Testing is another mode of setting up isolated, identical, replicas of production environments in the public and private cloud – without requiring modification or cloud migration. It is self-service on-demand work space provisioning technology. For Cloud(Private) testing environment, the data center where the services materialize is placed inside the ken of company’s firewall. Offline Test execution is carried out in Private Cloud. In Public Cloud testing, the environment is provided via internet at a public space.

Best Practices

The main aim of adopting best practices is a big leap from the age-old performance, scalability and skill related issues and problems. Best Practices to set up Test Environment in the era of Cloud and Agile require:-

Timely test environment provisioning as per specifications with varied technologies and diversified skill set is one of the important steps to allocate test environments, A Standardized testing service across all the test environments should be maintained for proper planning and steering of management of test environments.
Capacity requirement forecasting and demanding in advance is a wise step for smooth execution and on-time project delivery.
Effective monitoring and mapping of the test environments should be done by maintaining the list of devices and its related information, processes, methodologies and application stacks.
Allocation and management of assets are done only in case of availability of test environment. Availability is prioritized on the basis of requirement, release cycle and reservations.
Issue Management of Test Environment is also an integral step,especially for Conflict resolution of test environment, which usually arises when one or more project compete for the same environment or asset at the same time. It is resolved by maintaining a transient Environment reservation table, clever mapping of asset requirement and demand table and environment refresh which should be done timely to identify the unutilized space and allocate it to the next project.
Version management through Virtual data center sculpts. Through these, a consistent version of current release, prior release and customer verification specification is maintained and is used as template. Version validation is also done to ensure all the information is up-to-date and detailed.
On-demand degree management of environment which can be scaled up or down as per the requirements.
Maintenance of centralized catalog of the test environment skills through an exclusive identifier to track changes and identify asset locations, especially for security management and allocation of test environments and its assets.

Challenges

Despite the benefits of Cloud and Agile testing, some challenges and issues still exist in Test Environment setup and maintenance of Cloud and Agile Test Environment. Few of them are:

The performance Testing and Scalability evaluation does not support dynamic scalability, SLA-based requirements and scalable testing environments. Maturing these testing and evaluation system with special features which are cloud-based and adaptive will assist in a good way to overcome the issues.
Absence of QoS standards for security oriented QA for end-to-end application process. Secured QoS standards and test models, techniques and tools for security testing in clouds will be a promising solution for this issue.
Stubbornness towards the iterative changes in requirement. Developers have now started treating requirement as prioritize stack and thus make changes throughout the lifecycle.
Absence of a systematic solution for on-demand test environment creation. Enabling the tools to support cloud-based techniques will solve the problem to a great extent.
Target device selection is a big challenge for testers and developers. Selection of appropriate simulators and Testing tools which are supported in the Cloud Environment will solve the issue.

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Conclusion

Maturing of strategies to stay relevant and enduring the pace of change will help Cloud and Agile testing to emerge as winners. The only thing to be kept in mind is the strategies should not be dogmatic. As the test beds will advance quickly, the test environments need to take a position on what the future will hold for the testing arena and plan accordingly.

Right choices for Shift Left testing : Benefits of Shift Left testing

Software developers often face problems associated with cost, technology and time to market when it comes to providing solutions to the clients. Most prominent problems are:

High software development cost
Inability to meet the delivery time
Improper testing which may lead to loss of business
Inability to deliver standard quality software

All of these issues can be eliminated with shift left testing. In shift left testing, main focus shifts on quality and testing starts right from the inception of a project. As per the conventional models, testing begins when the development is in coding phase, thus leaving room for errors to be discovered at a later stage of testing.

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As the shift left model mainly focuses on quality and is implemented from day one, the probability of identifying the errors is much more and so is their timely remedy. Additionally, shift left model mainly encompasses the inception phase, thus making it much easier to fix the errors at minimal cost. Following are some of the major benefits of shift left testing.

Increased test coverage
Saving resources and time
Timely delivery of software
Bugs are detected and rectified early
Enhanced team bonding between developers and testers

Simply put, shift left testing provides solution to issues related to cost, time and quality.

Best practices

Developers to take up some elements of testing: As the customer-driven development models have become more important in software development field, test automation is becoming more important. Normally, development teams have more developers compared to testers. That being said, developers should take some responsibility for the test automation efforts to expedite the entire process. BDD (behavior driven development) is a useful way to persuade developers to begin creating tests and bridging the gap between testers and developers.One way to introduce developers to test scenarios is where testers use customer-focused vocabulary to create test scenarios, which developer scan then implement in codes to automate them.
Test automation code reviews: It’s difficult to find testers who have the required knowledge to develop reusable and maintainable code. However, for test automation code reviews, testers should know how to perform quality checks to see the codes are reviewed correctly and ensure that the developers haven’t missed scenarios that should have been examined. Though testers can be given the task of code quality review checks, it’s wise to let the developers build automation frameworks rather than burdening testers with it. This way, you can provide the testers with more time to devote on finding bugs instead of creating a framework. Just as developers should share some testing responsibilities with testers as mentioned before, testers too can take up a few developer tasks like test automation code reviews. When testers have the required domain knowledge together with a holistic understanding of system and the company’s methodology, they’ll have better understanding of the areas where defects can be found.
Focus on teaching testers to code: Just as you can’t teach or train a developer to perform all functions of a tester, the vice versa is also true. Yet, for reviewing codes efficiently, testers should learn how to code. Thus, the focus should be on teaching them how to read and modify codes and become technically proficient in it at some level. An example could be the tester’s knowledge and ability of altering an automated test.
Using proper test tools: Testers often experience issues related to inability to develop automated tests utilizing the tools that are being used by the developers. It acts as a barrier between developers and testers when it comes to adhering to some object-oriented, common design principles. Nowadays, many renowned test tool vendors are supporting languages like C# and Java. Many of them also hold the ability to blend with source control software and developer IDEs. In an ideal test automation scenario, tools that fit into the developers’ ecosystem should be used.
Team effort and collaboration: Successful delivery of a product is the outcome of a complete team effort. Testability has to be there in the mind of developers from the inception of a project. That being said, developers should plan the solution with automation of an element before its code is written. When developers become responsible for most of the test automation framework development, they’ll become more conscious of the issues that can trigger undependable tests because of bad testability code design. The team can be truly successful only when testability becomes the core focus right from the beginning.

Final Words

A seamless implementation of shift left testing identifies errors early in the SDLC process, decreases risks and reduces cost of rework, all of which have great significance in the development process. Adoption of shift left approach helps organizations to move toward a faster, more predictive and preventive approach to testing which can be implemented across any methodology.

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Companies can leverage the shift left approach to propel their organization towards a quicker, more predictive and preventive approach to testing,Contact Our Digital testing experts for a free assessment. – It functions remarkably well in agile environments, but can be applied equally well across any other methodology as well.

Big Data Analytics for Healthcare – How Big Data Will Change Healthcare

Big Data is a buzz word that has spread in the healthcare industry like a virus. But this virus is here for the good. Big Data is giving birth to new and efficient methods of mining data or testing methodologies. This presents an opportunity for healthcare sector to benefit in many ways- enabling new sources of research, identification of potential patients before severe diagnosis and enhanced overall efficiency.

So how is Big Data Testing changing healthcare?

Healthcare business is using Big Data Testing use cases to test effectiveness of certain medicines and much more…

The post How Big Data Testing is Changing Healthcare? appeared first on TechArcis Blog.

What is the Best Test estimation technique?

Testing Estimation is a managerial chore, which assesses the completion time of any task. For efficient test management, it is one of the primary tasks to estimate the effort required for the test in test estimation. In other words, test estimation includes evaluation of the required resources to carry out a task, time required for its completion, reckoning skills and experience of team members and the project budget.

Test Estimation Techniques

Function Point Analysis:It is one of the top-down techniques, which is formulae-based. The idea was to develop a mechanism to anticipate effort, resources and budget linked with the software. Function Point can be used to determine the productivity accurately as it is a formulae-based technique. Function points can be calculated by using five major components namely the External Input, External O/P, External Enquiry, Internal Logical Files and External Interface files, along with 14 General System Characteristics or GSC’s. The result of the analysis is same even when carried out at different times by different user with a marginal error. Function Point Analysis has been automated in AFP or Automated Function Points through which FP’s can be determined automatically without manual effort and analysis can be done easily. FPA typically used for development. It has been extended for Testing. However, it is restricted to system functional testing.

Test Points Analysis(TPA): It is one of the top-down techniques. The idea was to develop a mechanism to anticipate effort, resources and budget linked with the software. TPA is developed based on Functional point methodology. It is also recommended to use FP counting. However, the user is free to any of kind of counting mechanism that are widely accepted in the industry. It is also seen that some of the testing shop arrived their own counting mechanism for functional and non-functional category.

TPA basically depends upon three factors:

Size which determines the count of Function Points allocated to the system. Size then depends upon various other sub factors like Complexity, Interfacing and Uniformity. Complexity keeps a check on number of conditional statements within a function. More conditions account for greater complexity. Interfacing keeps a track of data set communication, i.e account of number of data sets within a function and number of functions using a particular data set. Uniformity verifies the number of similar template functions.

-Productivity is based on two important factors – Background factors that includes the backstage workers of a system like test environments, tools etc, which are hidden but equally important for smooth functioning of the software; and Productivity figure which is estimation and calculation of virtual factors like knowledge of the team members, the number of experienced members in the team etc.

Test strategy, which depends upon Usage Importance and Usage Intensity of a function.

Wideband Delphi Technique:It is a group expert estimation technique. In this technique, the consensus is reached by brainstorming and negotiations. Wideband Delphi Technique is the successor of Boehm’s Delphi technique. This technique involves the following steps:

Selection of Team

– Kickoff Meeting which involves brainstorming between the members

– Individual Estimation Preparation

– Estimation Session, which involves iterative brainstorming session over the individual estimates, especially if the range of estimates is too wide,until the team brings it down to a decent range of estimate.

– Compilation of the final decision

– Review of results

Considerations during Estimation

General features to be essentially considered during Estimation:

Bug Cycle should be included as a possible hitch to cope up with any testing delays.
Buffer Time should be included as contingency for delay.
Performance Load Testing should be given its quota of time for execution.
Check if Parallel Testing is possible or not, especially in cases where you have earlier versions of same product to which you can compare the output.
Resting effort
Scope of projects and all the final deliverables should be duly considered.
Proper Documentation for future references should be done.

Based on the facts and research, except TPA all other estimation techniquies focus to arrive overall development effort including Testing. Every estimation has its own advantages and disadvantages. But TPA looks promising in the terms of accuracy even though it is complex and not used widely. Hopefully in coming days this technique would be adopted widely and best practices would be developed around TPA to minimize the complexity.

Connect TechArcis today to leverage our unified test automation framework to overcome Key challenges in Test estimation technique and get your software, Website/Web Apps functionally ready for your niche audience.

Software Testing Lessons You Can Take From Pokemon Go

Unless you’ve been living under the rock, you know Pokemon Go pretty well. This location-based, augmented reality game has created a rage in the gaming industry. Within a few weeks of its launch, the game’s daily active users are neck and neck with Twitter.

Source – https://www.similarweb.com/blog/pokemon-go

The game uses the GPS functionality of your smartphone to locate, capture and train the creatures from the favorite 90’s cartoon show, Pokemon. It won’t be an exaggeration to say that Pokemon Go has pushed up the stakes in the gaming industry.

With around 20 million active users in USA alone and millions of other users all around the world, Pokemon Go has become a viral phenomenon. Apart from all this, there were several glitches reported by the players, including login issues and the failure of the app to connect and sync with the GPS function of a mobile. But thanks to the performance testing efforts of the game development team, by now they have all become speck of dusts.

So, all app developers and game producers wait before you launch the next game or create the next app. This game can give some invaluable software testing lessons for your apps which are currently on the development stage. Believe it or not, you can actually improve the functionality of your apps by using this game alone! Doesn’t the very thought itself sound promising? So let’s take you through the app testing cheat codes you can learn from Pokemon Go.

➢ Don’t make your apps buckle under pressure. Who knows, your app may become a viral sensation like Pokemon GO and hence, you must be prepared to face the tide. Prepare your game servers to tackle the extra traffic (both incoming and outgoing), something the game developers of Pokemon GO, Ninatic, missed out on. They weren’t expecting such a phenomenal response to their game and hence, their servers were only trained to take up a certain level of traffic. When that number was surpassed, the game crashed and as a result many login issues cropped up. So, prepare yourself for the positive tirade.

➢ Testing the quality of your apps is very important. Hire some beta testers to find out the bugs present at front as well as the back end of your application. In case there are some glitches, resolve them immediately and only then introduce your app in the market.

➢ Consequently, perform load testing. To begin with, keep it to a normal load and then increase the load 2-times, 4-times, 6-times and so on. This will help you in understanding how effective the app is when it comes to withstanding multiple downloads. Use proper API and APM tools to diagnose the data sent and synchronize it with the data obtained from both the ends.

➢ Next, test the battery efficiency of your game. If you’ve followed the launch of Pokemon Go, battery consumption was one of the major issues initially reported by the users. So, make sure your game consumes a minimal amount of battery and it does not overheat the CPU of the mobile. Have a baseline performance and compare this value with the performance ratios obtained when the game is used on other mobiles. This will help you know where the game lags.

➢ Continuous testing and collecting anonymous data statistics will help you overcome the battery issue. So, follow these steps crucially and enhance the performance of your game before introducing it officially.

➢ If your app/game will be using GPS, make sure that your game properly synchronizes with the functionality, one thing the Pokemon Go team missed out on. If your app doesn’t work in tandem with a mobile’s GPS then there is no use in claiming so. This will just add to the list of fails, and your application will turn out to be a complete disaster. So, functionality testing of the app is very important. Segment your game into numerous parts and start testing each dimension of the game in an extensive manner.

➢ In today’s field, augmented reality has become a trending concept which will make the user to get a seamless and rich experience and providing the same is not a simple joke. So, you must be careful enough if you are going to tread this path.

So, Pokemon GO has proved that you can be a trendsetter but only if you care about the quality of the game. Many of the users couldn’t play the game initially, but one the developers took matters in their hands and fixed the glitches, the game spread like a wildfire. If you want to gain the same fame for your app, do follow all the tips given here.

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Test Automation Framework vs. Test Tools

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Test data and test environment setup expertise:

Virtualization expertise:

SDET:

Non-functional testing skills:

TDD or BDD:

Knowing internal applications:

Ability to choose and work on test automation tools:

Ability to address business challenges:

Mentoring developers and selves:

Taking strategic decisions:

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Conclusion

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Today

In the Next Year or Two

Beyond

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