Designing Usability into a Test Automation Framework

Chris Petrov

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Networking Dinner @ 5:45; Chapter Business @ 6:45; Program @ 7:00 PM

In the South Multimedia Conference Room 1E:

at Countrywide, Building 2, 29851 Agoura Road, Agoura Hills, CA 91302

Efficiently delivering test automation to the masses, in a manner that is sustainable and scalable, poses a challenge for any QA organization making the attempt. How much automation or tool expertise do my testers have and need? How dynamic is the application? How easy or difficult will automated test assets be to maintain as the application matures? How much time will be available for automated test development? What type of testing is required?

This Case Study will examine the design considerations and features required to develop a scalable and sustainable keyword driven test automation framework. Project requirements included the need for fast and easy test case creation by testers with no automation experience, the need to limit the learning curve to between 2 and 8 hours for testers to be productive, and the need to create automated tests prior to application availability.

The presentation will include a description of the front-end implementation, which increased test case creation productivity by 100%, and how to logically structure the GUI Object Map hierarchy to reduce the learning curve. Also discussed will be the implementation of a variety of Integrated Productivity Tools to decrease automation debugging efforts and increase test case creation productivity.

In his role as a Test Automation Manager for Leverage Point Corporation, Chris Petrov is responsible for the design, development, implementation and maintenance of test automation solutions for a variety of clients. His almost 20 years of experience include roles as a software engineer, quality assurance engineer, test automation lead and quality assurance manager in a variety of systems development disciplines and experience with test automation tools from virtually every major vendor. His experience spans numerous software development methodologies and test automation approaches. Chris is an accomplished presenter, responsible for presenting his automation vision and solutions to clients and internal customers on a regular basis.