Testing with Selenium & Saucelabs

A very important part of our software development cycle is functional testing. Luckily, functional testing techniques have evolved tremendously since the dark days of old school testing. Back then, testing was done with countless Excel sheets each having multiple tabs that reflected all the individual scenarios. Each tab looked a bit like this:

1. Goto web-page: http://myincredibletestproject.com
2. Click on the login link
3. Enter username: test
4. Enter password: secret
5. Click login button
6. Verify response: "Failed to login. Invalid credentials."

We used to have so many of these files! And for each release our testers would have to follow the instructions from every single line of every tab of every file. It was a painstaking process to say the least! A total regression test cycle could take several man/weeks.

And if one of our testers reported in sick, well.. we were basically screwed. Our deadline certainly at risk.

Factor in the fact that we were wearing down quality testers with all that borderline hypnotic and boring repetition and we knew we had to find something better. So we started investigating and trying out a lot of different test automation solutions. It took some time but we finally settled on what was best for us overall.

Being a Java development company we chose Selenium as our automated test engine. We also went with Selenium's Remote Control through java files option.

In our office (and datacenter) we don't have to bother anymore with running multiple configurations of machines with different OS and Browser combinations. We're a happily using Saucelabs for that, for multiple years now.

So for each release we get a detailed test report with what scenario was done, the status of the test, using what os/browser, on what date and time, etc. And using Saucelabs' Result Integration we give our customers quick and easy access to the screen recordings of each test run. It's just great!

Now (almost) all our projects use Selenium WebDriver for test automation. And a full regression test cycle only takes a couple hours to run, at most. And not only for 1 browser. We now test 2 or 3 browsers by default for each release.

Our testers can now concentrate on new functionality, monkey testing and generally making sure test scripts are up to date and that they correspond to the requirements as they should.

Back in the day, these great tools just weren't available, but in todays development environment, test automation is a must. This is especially true in an agile environment where developers tend to deliver a lot of rather small bits of software in sprints (very short development cycles).

If you're interested in a demo, give me a call and let's meet for some coffee!