The future for Test Automation

Sarah SaltzmanEMEA Manager for QualityTest Management Summit

January 31st, 2007

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The software testing marketplace

Distributed Automated software Quality marketplace grew 20% in 2005 (IDC)

Blurring of focus – Developer testing seen as a growth area, therefore co-ordination of effort will become important (IDC)

Spend in Testing phase of SDLC increasing as a percentage of whole project (Ovum)

Automation tools percieved as under-utilised, 20 – 40% usage model (Ovum)

Test Management – the new de facto tool (was test automation tool) (Ovum)

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The software testing marketplace

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The software testing marketplace

Drivers– Compliance– Business aligned IT– Process maturity– Complexity of technologies– Productivity improvements– Off-shore investment – Application Security– SOA

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Some approaches

Keyword / Data driven testing Requirements based testing Risk based testing Test Frameworks / harnesses using automation tool Model driven testing, early stages

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How are test automation tools used today?

Testers with a development background – automated tool user

Testers with a User background (phased) – Keyword driven testing– manual testing– Automated testing

Not the entire team (why?) Developers – rarely use them (why?) Competitor to test automation is manual testing or no

testing….

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What’s emerging?

Keyword driven testing – the next stageModel driven testingVisual testingDropping support for older technologiesTraceabilityMetrics and measures

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What’s missing? Support for specific frameworks / packages – at a

deep technical level? Root cause analysis? Easy migration to automation? Easier script maintenance? Intelligent test tools? Integrations with other tools or other vendors? Testing in development??!! Support distributed (global) deployments? Ease of use…… (that old chestnut!!)

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For discussion …

ROT –if you run a test more than 3 times, it is worth automation effort…– Who should be automating tests?– What is preventing the wholesale adoption of automated

testing tools?– What features would we like to see in the future?– How can we influence the vendors?– How can we take automation to the development teams?