About the author: Jaap de Hond, Founder of ITs Quality Service, has more than 16 years of experience helping software providers and departments implement automated testing. As Business and Test Consultant he has specialized in process optimization related to administrative software and more.
Software departments and providers often perceive the implementation of test automation as an insurmountable project. Especially smaller companies have a hard time justifying the initial investment of time required to get automation off the ground. This is completely understandable considering the common approaches to test automation available. They either require highly specialized technical expertise, a very long training process, or both.
I’m working with clients of all sizes, and I like to show them that there is an alternative to the less approachable test automation tools, one that provides an easy way for them to set up better, faster, and more flexible tests.
One of the projects that I have been working on is a web application for Dutch agricultural businesses. The application has a potential user base of thousands of farmers who will use it for planning and monitoring their crops and consult it for advice about seeds and fertilizers.
In this project, I am using the Leaptest Automation Platform for automated testing for the following reasons:
Incredibly short learning curve
When I first tried out the Leaptest Automation Platform, I built my first automated flow in one day on my own. I showed the case to a colleague and because the tool is so intuitive, he also picked it up right away, and in just one day he too was able to automate with Leaptest.
Regression testing the agriculture application is covered by a suite of 15 tests. Once I had become even more familiar with Leaptest, it took me just one day to build these 15 tests as automated flows.
More flexible than Selenium
Before using Leaptest, I would sometimes rely on writing automated tests with Selenium. However, I missed some flexibility. When circumstances in a testing scenario changed, the Selenium code would often break, and I had to rewrite it. Test cases in Leaptest are much adaptable and require very little maintenance.
Reliable and fast execution
The application I’m working on is based on IBM AS/400 technology which is an older system. Therefore, it was imperative to me that a test automation tool had capabilities for automating legacy systems. Text execution in Leaptest, even on a system like this, is incredibly reliable. It’s also fast. It takes approximately 40 minutes to run the full suite of regression tests.
Letting testers do testing
One of the issues with manual testing is that testers drown in repetitive and tedious tasks, and in time they tend to lose focus on their primary responsibility: Challenging the end-product in creative ways. With automated testing, these repetitive tasks are eliminated. For example, generating random test data is extremely time-consuming if done manually, but with Leaptest’s capabilities for data-driven testing, a task like this if fully automated. This lets me – and other testers in the projects I’m working on – focus on the more complex aspects of software testing which, in the end, results in improved quality of the product being tested.
In short, I’ve experienced that with Leaptest’s flowchart-based approach to automation helps make test automation much more approachable. It has made it easier for me to convince clients about the case for automated testing.
