SCRIMPS-STD: Test Automation Design Principles - and asking the right questions!
•Télécharger en tant que PPTX, PDF•
2 j'aime•1,392 vues
Download, install, record… we’re automating!?? Asking good questions and building good design to reach reasonable Automation outcomes
Recommandé
Recommandé
Contenu connexe
Tendances
Tendances (20)
Similaire à SCRIMPS-STD: Test Automation Design Principles - and asking the right questions!
Similaire à SCRIMPS-STD: Test Automation Design Principles - and asking the right questions! (20)
Dernier
Dernier (20)
SCRIMPS-STD: Test Automation Design Principles - and asking the right questions!
- 1. Download, install, record… we’re automating!?? Asking good questions and building good design to reach reasonable Automation outcomes Richard Robinson, May 2014
- 2. Automation frameworks…. arggghhh! • So many platforms! • So many programming languages! • So many tool vendors! • So many interfaces! • So much data! • So many stakeholders! • So little time!
- 3. Automation framework design principles • Parameterise your input data • Modularise your automation blocks • Setup and tear down maintenance • Use self-descriptive data (SDD) • Use a database for scalability • Manage states • Expand input stakeholders • Simple trigger points • Simple reporting methods
- 4. Design-principles-in-a-diagram Execution UI Output reports Automation engine System under test Automation databaseInput values lists Stakeholders Execution trigger from Web UI Reporting to Web UI Input values from flexible entry sources Database input values and results collection Adding DB values Execution of tests with system Modularisation Setup, teardown Parameterisation Self-descriptive data State management
- 5. Parameterise - explanation • Parameterised data is changed each time the test is run • Values can be randomised • Known stored valid values can be used (or invalid, depending on your test) • Functions can be used to create data depending on other variables • Input fields reference the variable, not actual concrete data
- 6. Parameterise - example 1 • For a registration form with Firstname/lastname fields, you can use a name lookup list using a long static list of first name of all lengths and punctuation. • Chandrarajan Sivasaravanamuttu (Sri Lankan Cricket President) • Mata'afa Mulinu'u II (Samoan President) • Haven’T (Actual boys names from 2012)
- 7. Parameterise - example 2 • Suburbs in Australia http://burbs.com.au/australian-postcodes/
- 8. Parameterise - example 3 • Credit card numbers used around the world http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_card_number • Remember to also refer to your institutional whitelist for further reduce the valid credit card numbers
- 9. Parameterise - examples • Mobile numbers in use in Australia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_numbers_in_Austral ia
- 10. Parameterise - benefits • A different test is run each time • Framework is more extensible to other users • Can scale the input values • Reduces maintainability • Get around constraints of the data or function • Data is realistic, and supports and bugs found • Can build in safety so that live records, account, or data is not used
- 11. Modularise - explanation • Modules are building blocks of script or code • They are like a family tree and any layer can be executed • Built once and reused often across scenario tests
- 12. Modularise - examples • Field definitions and reuse - eg. password field is used on registration and also password reset • Library use of common functions • Parts of a scenarios eg. Log in, register, find random item, checkout, payment, deregister, change password, update profile • Full scenarios that can be executed in serial to show real end-to-end usage of the system
- 13. From http://safsdev.sourceforge.net/FRAMESDataDrivenTestAutomationFrameworks.htm Modularise - breaking it down
- 14. Modularise - benefits • Fewer code blocks to maintain • Build once, use often, saves time when building • Non-expert coders can build scenarios using blocks (premise of BDD)
- 15. Setup & teardown - explanation • Test your framework • Build quality checks into the framework • Ensure the system is ready for execution before finding out from a functional tests • Check and maintain data
- 16. Setup & teardown - examples • Execution setup script - checking and maintaining environment variables, 3rd party connectivity, server availability. eg Ping servers, send test request • Data setup script - gather record to use, and apply any initial checks on it • Reset your data once its been used
- 17. Setup & teardown - benefits • Informed of environmental issues prior to any test is run • Can be used as an environment monitoring tool • Allows for better re-use of data and records
- 18. Self-descriptive data - explanation • Self-descriptive data is labelled to identify itself and the test • It is constrained by what is acceptable for the field • Used for quick checks of test results by scanning sizeable output
- 19. Self-descriptive data - examples • PDF report on screen showing transactions and balances • SMS texts being received for all notifications - matching the action to the message • Web table data showing groups of results
- 20. Self-descriptive data - benefits • Good for manual output checking from time to time • Good for simplified results checking, as all tests should fit in same results class • Does not require external oracles • Can generate and verify large amounts of complex • Reduces time to do any manual verification • Reduces diagnosis when things go wrong • Good record keeping practice
- 21. Database-driven - explanation • If your framework is starting to grow and expand, then consider using a database for: - input data storage - parameter storage (eg. environment variables) - output result storage • Excel is great for small operations, but at some point, having excel output files created for all tests becomes unmanageable
- 22. Database-driven - examples • Environmental variables - server names, IPs, usernames, passwords, interface values • Data-set up - time-based variables • Input data - customer registration, orders, credit cards
- 23. Database-driven - benefits • Scalable • Efficient processing of data, results, and reports • Centralised - one collection point for all data and results • Allows for multiple users
- 24. State management - explanation • Know your record states • Maintain record states as in-use • Return records for re-use
- 25. State management - examples • Capture main records in a DB, or file • Capture defining field values eg. in-use state, customer cohort, type of payment method, address type, comms type
- 26. State management - benefits • Efficient for role-based, and state-based systems • Minimised occurrence of record conflicts • Allows for multiple instances of execution • Allows for multiple users to execute
- 27. Stakeholder usage - explanation • Framework used by any stakeholder • Additional framework components build to support others • Access to data inputting, execution, results generation • Input to methodologies such as BDD, ATDD, or any keyword-driven framework implementation
- 28. Stakeholder usage - examples • Adding values to data input lists • UI to add values to input data directly to database • UI to trigger tests on demand • Running a demo at a stakeholder meeting • Obtaining report
- 29. Stakeholder usage - benefits • Buy in from stakeholders, increase in investment • Credibility and quality for all to see • More feedback on quality of tests
- 30. Simple triggers - explanation • Automation can be used for many purposes and for may stakeholders • If the trigger points are easy to use, then it will get used more often
- 31. Simple triggers - examples • Web front end page with scenarios and suits available as a menu to visitors • Mobile app to trigger tests
- 32. Simple triggers - benefits • Framework more widely used, improving value (“ROI”) • More usage means more testing (and checking), means greater chance of finding bugs
- 33. Simple reporting - explanation • Reporting is what stakeholders see and use to communicate to others • Publish automation runs to a web GUI • Allows layers of access to different reports (role-based login)
- 34. Simple reporting - examples • Report to levels of management, or stakeholder groups eg. Product owner, development team, managers • Report to levels of test execution eg Acceptance test runs, function test runs, environmental monitoring, data-driven tests, scenarios
- 35. Simple reporting - benefits • Exposes the value of automation to the stakeholders • Allows for feedback into the quality of the framework • Allows for higher usage of framework by other stakeholder groups
- 36. Focussing questions… (we are not done yet!) • Do you agree? • Learned something new? • Applicable? How much do I implement the design principles? • Are there any more? • What’s missing?
- 37. 10th design principle… CONTEXT IS KING! • What are the outcomes we are trying to realise and why? • What problem are we trying to solve? • What matters and what questions do we ask? outcomeautomationproblem context & environment
- 38. What outcome are we trying to achieve? • To automate 100% of the functions • To gain 100% coverage of a specification • To reduce the number of manual testers to zero • To shorten regression cycles to 1 minute • To deepen exploratory testing to be exhaustive • To reduce administration overhead to zero • Monitor all user pathways • To delivery working code overnight ready for utilisation
- 39. What problems are we trying to solve? • Regression testing takes too long and is too costly • We cannot afford all these testers, lets get rid of 40% • We are losing quality from our product, lets automate • Lets make use of dead time by testing overnight, automatically • Lets save time by checking the quality of the release prior to manually testing it • There are too many bugs found in production, lets increase our testing coverage by automating
- 40. What matters?
- 41. Strategy - Cost considerations • Prototype to get further funding? • Automation is the saviour of our project, spend, spend, spend • Whose vision is it to automate? Do they have a budget? • Are the automation team in budget?
- 42. Strategy- People considerations • Full time dedicated resources or stealing developer time • Proven skills or developing them • Full domain knowledge or getting from business resources • Expert automation consultant (selling of implementation) • Expert automation specialist (coding, implementing)
- 43. Strategy - Time considerations • Big bang approach, or easy onset • Quick wins, or consistent development • Milestone based, or open ended outcomes
- 44. Strategy - System considerations • Platform tools, language • Interfaces - 3rd party vendors, access • Data sensitivity, record availability • Environment management and coverage • Deployment infrastructure and processes
- 45. Strategy - Quality considerations • How to measure? • Are we actually speeding things up? • Are we actually reducing any cost? • What is our maintenance costs? • When do we know its not working? • What does ‘good’ look like?
- 47. Want a trick to remembering the principles? The single most important reason to reduce cost or save and another word for ‘save’ is… management buy-in to Automation is…
- 48. so…
- 49. Lets rearrange the principles… • Setup and tear-down • Context is king • Reporting interface • Input stakeholders • Modularise • Parameterise • Self-descriptive • State management • Trigger interface • Database-driven And take the first letters together… and you get…
- 50. SCRIMPS STD (Scrimps Standard) “A management-supported automation framework design standard, with the sole objective to gain economical outcomes of the quality assurance function”
- 51. What is your context? Experience reports… • Setup and tear-down • Context is king • Reporting interface • Input stakeholders • Modularise • Parameterise • Self-descriptive • State management • Trigger interface • Database-driven
- 52. Resources Excellent overview of testing and automation, best next steps to read. Kaner, 2010, http://kaner.com/pdfs/VISTACONexploratoryTestAutmation.pdf Models of autoation McCowatt, http://www.ministryoftesting.com/2014/05/automation-time-change-models-iain-mccowatt/ http://exploringuncertainty.com/blog/archives/1010 Problem, solutions, maintainability, http://www.ministryoftesting.com/2010/07/an-introduction-to-test-automation-design/ Self-verifying data Doug Hoffman, 2012, http://www.ssqa-sv.org/presentations/Doug%20Hoffman%20SSQA%2011-13-2012.pdf Noel Nyman, Microsoft, 2001, http://www.stickyminds.com/sites/default/files/presentation/file/2013/01TAU_T6.pdf Maintainability http://dhemery.com/pdf/writing_maintainable_automated_acceptance_tests.pdf Automation test pyramid Martin Fowler (2012), http://martinfowler.com/bliki/TestPyramid.html Framework design Carl Nagle, ”The test framework should be application-independent" http://safsdev.sourceforge.net/FRAMESDataDrivenTestAutomationFrameworks.htm General automation methodology Borland (2012), https://www.borland.com/_images/Silk-Test_WP_How-to-successfully-automate-the-functional-testing-process_tcm32-205735.pdf IBM, http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_wh/n/GBW03035USEN/GBW03035USEN.PDF Hybrid approach most popular Yogi Gupta, general implementation methodology http://www.slideshare.net/yogindernath/understanding-of-automation-framework-presentation
- 53. Resources continued… IMPLEMENTATION Good design ideas, technical implementation (2011) http://technologyandleadership.com/30-feet-view-of-test-automation-framework-with-selenium/ Generic implementation principles http://www.theeffectiveengineer.com/blog/what-makes-a-good-engineering-culture Doug Hoffman on Automation http://www.slideshare.net/Softwarecentral/software-test-automation-beyond-regression-testing Failure and problems with automation http://five-ways-to-make-test-automation-fail.pen.io/ Smartbear Guide to converting to automation testing - desktop http://www2.smartbear.com/rs/smartbear/images/Your%20Guide%20to%20Converting%20to%20Automated%20Testing.pdf Alan Page - The A Word - desktop https://leanpub.com/TheAWord Automation Checklist - strategy, business, tests https://hackpad.com/Tips-to-Approaching-Test-Automation-fDRllKNrRJ2
- 54. About the presenter An independent contract tester who works primarily in automation, performance and test management roles. The current President of the Sydney Testers Meetup, and facilitator of WeekendTesting.com/WTANZ. The head the facilitation of the Let’s Test Oz and CAST conferences. Blogs at www.hellotestworld.com and publish his ideas to slideshare, and testing magazines such as Testing Trapeze. A Black Belt Tester of the Miagi-do school of software testing, and a founding member of the ISST. Richard Robinson @richrichnz richrob79
Notes de l'éditeur
- Pep talk: Look, its a presentation, its entertainment. Please smile, and enjoy it. Remember, no body is testing anyway. Lots of material to (quickly, no boredom) Slides available (so you dont need to write it all down.) Please hold your questions until after the presentation, and after the experience reports from Arial, Priyo and Paul. I will go through at a good pace, so you dont get bored. Please, if you need a drink, food or facilities break, or you want to check out the board, please get up and wander about. Vote with your feet. If you want to meet others and network outside the room, that is fine too.
- Confusing, undirected, out of control Sell job - I have the answers (From experience, building, managing, and researching) Get control back! (You want the principles! You can have the principles!)
- 20s Here is the technical overview of my talk If you wanted was a list to compare to yours, this is it This is my list, from my experience, in my my situational context. Lets see what they look like in a diagram… <<next slide>>
- Lets go through each one, in more technical detail
- Emotional statement: Parameratising is so much fun! Impact statement: Say NO to hard coding! Examples: parameterising with value lists! see next slides Parameterising is about NOT hard coding test values in to tests. Instead, variables are used that can be controlled and manipulated to suit the test, idea, function, cycle, or tester.
- Variables can come from many sources. The simplest way is to use a lookup list or table. The values in the table represent various valid values that hit right up to the boundaries of the field definition.
- Mobile number SMS notification testing
- so you can get away from the automation is just checking argument somewhat other project team members can add input values to your source parameter scale to larger set as more is learned and known about the function; fill in the gaps later on No hard-coding; dont have to go update everywhere where you used the name John Smith can script in specific environmental constraints such as not being able to actually use assigned mobiles numbers if there is a challenge about your data, you can say “Actually, that name is possible and is the former Samoan president”
- Emotional sale: I love building stuff! Impact message: Modularisation is chunking building blocks. It includes abstraction. Example to run with: Many automation tools adopt this principle natively, such as web driver and soapUI. Modularisation is about abstracting the layers of automation code in a similar fashion to object-oriented programming. It is a good practice to adopt when building a complex system. Smaller chunks of the system, or function, are scripted/coded and called upon by blocks of code with a wider scope.
- Here we see a diagram that breaks out the levels of modules into High level, intermedia, and low level. This container approach is common to most automation tools, or can be built in.
- We break things into modules to save time, as common modules can be repeated for different tests, and that means less maintenance.
- Emotional sale: I like a clean run everytime! Impact statement: Take control of your execution! Manage your bugs! Example to run with: checking for broken lines of code in soapui. banking interfaces are up. Taking control of automation means taking control of your environment and data. Make sure you do some setup and checking that all is in place before you launch a test.
- Emotional sale: I love being efficient! Its so impressive to others! Impact statement: Self-descriptive data is story-telling! Example: SMS messages, OR bank statements If you want to reduce your data management overhead, and align manual and automated testing, then using self-descriptive data is a great practice in the right context.
- Emotional sale: Size matters! Impact statement: Execution cycle speed is important! Say NO to excel spreadsheet! Example: WebDriver output of csv files! An automation framework should be build so that multiple automation apps can be used, and swapped in and out over time. The framework should be able to handle scaling of tests, functions and stories. To do this, a central automation database is your ultimate solution.
- To get the framework components of automation engine/application, working together with using data from a central database, and reporting back to that database allows for scalability and efficient processing power of results.
- Emotional sale: I love having a living breathing automation solution! Impact statement: Share your data records across multiple users` Example: opal card id data is limited. (can be created using a binary and customers Test data can easily get out of hand. You need to find the constraints on your test data before deciding how to design your management of it. Often, we are limited by the data records available - due to using multiple systems with only a subset of data from each. So we need to be clever with how we use and reuse data records.
- Emotional sale: I get excited when others want to use my stuff! Impact statement: Work with your people! Example: Agile team working together on Acceptance Tests, test building, test values expansion, demo Stakeholders should be able to get their hands on the automation framework where necessary. If you stand-up to good design principles, then there should be nothing to hide. Automation execution, and most testing, should be something that everyone thinks about, and contributes to.
- Automation testing is only checking of tests. There are not usually many surprises in terms of functional bugs, or design issues. Automation usually only check the surface of the function or story. These types of tests are good for monitoring, so there is little risk of opening this up to other stakeholders to use. Its a great way to get buy-in for automation in general and ramp up the investment.
- Now I want you to think about your environment, job, automation framework… And think about these questions… (read them in an inquisitive tone mate ..)
- Outcomes! Problems! What matters! If you are seeking outcomes that have been proposed or suggested by others, then ask yourself why? The outcomes are likely attempting to solve a problem or two… what could they be. Once you know the problems, what constraints and opportunities are there that can help realise the outcomes.
- Is anyone trying to achieve any of these? I sincerely hope not… What is your team and company trying to achieve? What is your MISSION. But wait, do you even know why you are trying to achieve ANYTHING? Often, we focus on the benefits without knowing why we are seeking them in the first place… SO How many of these are possible?
- So now we know some testing, project and business problems that we trying to solve with automation. But why do we have these problems? These are typically SYMPTOMS to the underlying problems. Where do they come from? If we know what is the basis of the problems, then our proposed solutions will be more realistic, achievable, and measurable. So how do we uncover where the problems have come from?
- Analyse key factors in the environment to identify how automation will SUCCEED in your environment. This is the business case and test strategy. Find out what it is, or build it yourself
- Cost is probably the single most important factor of any automation implementation, or framework design. You must know your cost issues and history, and how to navigate them. eg. MISSED Milestone payment will reduce investment in initiatives Where does the money come from?
- People will make or break any automation attempt. Who is available, who are they, how can you use them… What does your company need to succeed with automation? upskilling existing people new people getting access to the skills in your company
- “Timing is everything” When thinking tactically about your framework, your success will often bring more investment. You need to show regular success to gain CREDIBILITY, buy-in, and further investment.
- All systems come in different shapes and sizes. They have different platforms, technologies, 3rd party services, domain-specific constraints, contractual constraints. Framework design principles need to be checked against whether the system is capable of achieving the outcome. In some companies access to certain parts of the platform are forbidden, or unlikely. If you push access to the web server, or database server, you may find you are met with stiff resistance.
- Quality is last because its often the hardest to measure. Quality is your selling points to increase investment into the automation framework. Quality measurement helps you to realise your outcomes. If you don’t think about these things, then your manager will push them on to you, as it is some managers job to show realised outcomes, whether it be reduced cost, or reduced bugs found in production?