Automated Testing Introduction Process

The process of introducing automated testing to a new project team constitutes the third phase of the ATLM. This phase outlines the steps necessary to successfully introduce automated testing to a new project, which are summarized in the following sections.

Test Process Analysis

Test process analysis ensures that an overall test process and strategy are in place and are modified, if necessary, to allow automated testing to be introduced in a successful fashion. The test engineers define and collect test process metrics in order to allow for process improvement. Here test goals/objectives and strategies need to be defined and test process needs to be documented and communicated to the test team. In this phase, the kinds of testing applicable for the technical environment will be defined, and tests are defined that can be supported by automated tools.

During the test process analysis, techniques are defined. Best practices are laid out, such as conducting performance testing during the unit-testing phase.

Plans for user involvement are assessed, and test team personnel skills are analyzed against test requirements and planned test activities. Early test team participation is emphasized, supporting refinement of requirement specifications into terms that can be adequately tested while also supporting test team understanding of application requirements and design.

Test Tool Consideration

The test tool consideration process includes steps that investigate whether incorporation of automated test tools that have been brought into the company without a specific project in mind now would be beneficial to a specific project, given the project testing requirements, available test environment, personnel resources, user environment, platform, and product features of the application under test. Schedule is reviewed to ensure sufficient time for test tool setup and development of requirements hierarchy; potential test tools and utilities are mapped to test requirements, test tool compatibility with the application and environment is verified, and workaround solutions are investigated for incompatibility problems that surfaced during compatibility tests.