How 2020-2021 pandemic has shaped the test automation landscape?

Automation landscape

The world had come to an abrupt halt with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, but there was a sudden surge of innovation. Organizations in various sectors realized that to deal with the adversities of this crisis, they must innovate new ways to sustain their business. We adopted various digital platforms to interact and grow with the exchange of services and offerings. But ensuring the quality of these products, services and offerings remained a decisive point. 

We are all aware of the importance of testing. It is known to all that testing plays a vital role in ensuring system quality. Organizations are extremely vocal about the incompleteness of quality assurance without appropriate and adequate testing practices, structure, tools, and plans. Did the testing process come to an abrupt halt due to the outbreak of the Pandemic? No, it did not. In fact, organizations found different channels to facilitate the testing projects. As the old saying goes, “necessity is the mother of inventions”. 2020-2021 pandemic became a driving force to innovate for quality assurance.

Pandemic surely had some negative and positive impacts on digital transformation. But that did not refrain people from trying out new solutions and remedies to their problems. Let us look at some of the positive and negative impacts of digital transformation that organizations had to face during the global pandemic.

Positive impact of Covid-19 in digital transformation

There has been a tremendous change in the way people work, think, and act. They have learnt new techniques and how to put them to use. The digital transformation has made people adapt to the changes. They have learnt to think out of the box and try new technologies. Digital transformation has facilitated remote working, and employees know that they can still be productive and efficient even while working remotely. The new work structure is like, “give us the facilities and new technologies, and we will innovate from there”.

Negative impact of Covid-19 on digital transformation

What seemed like a positive development for some were unfavorable for others. Covid-19 came with certain restrictions on communication and physical interaction. Some of the organizations that followed an old school method could not evolve with the surrounding changes leading to the disintegration of their foundation. Many physical branches were closed down with the decrease in footfall, and their business moved to the virtual platform. It has become a strenuous task for the management team to bring their employees back to the office. Employees have learnt new ways of working it has become hard to drag their feet back to the office.

Testing before Pandemic

Software testing is an integral part of quality assurance, and organizations cannot put them on the back burner. Testing has come to the mainstream and is executed simultaneously with the development lifecycle. Organizations realized the importance of testing long before the outbreak of Covid-19 hence, continuous testing is included in CI/CD pipeline as an inseparable process. With the introduction of effective test automation tools, it has become easy and convenient to conduct and execute testing practices like regression, UI/UX functionality, integration, user acceptance and more at a massive scale. But there are more test requirements, which need expert and skilled testers to execute them. It is one reason that even after innovating the most effective test automation tools, organizations still require manual testing. Hence, we have the best of both worlds and automation test practice is most efficiently supported by manual testing.

Testing before the pandemic was mostly conducted onsite, with a significant portion handled by the offshore team. The organization had the advantages of system architecture and an adequate bandwidth with an efficient technical team deployed onsite that helped them carry out the end-to-end testing process without any disruption. After checking the end-to-end testing process and the product release, it would not have made much difference for the technical team to be on the testing site. However, the maintenance of the software performance and quality assurance was largely done by the offshore team.

Testing during Pandemic

The testing team still maintained the right blend of manual and automation testing. But a few things changed during the pandemic due to certain factors. There were sudden restrictions on travel and human contact. People were working from home and remotely, and international travel came to an abrupt halt. The testing process, however, could not have stopped. Organizations realized that it is only wise to adopt remote or offshore testing as an option. As test automation is more improvised and integrated with high-end technologies, remote and offshore testing would be as productive as onsite testing.

The remote testing model proved to be extremely convenient as the organizations could save a significant operational cost while the testing team handled the technical challenges and adversities. The technical team overcame many challenges like time zone differences, travel restrictions, and time constraints, ensuring 100% success in handling the end-to-end testing project from offshore. The team paid extra effort to deliver the project with utmost competence and assurance that all the testing aspects were considered and that all errors were addressed well without fail. Organizations are more confident that quality project delivery is possible even with challenges amidst the crisis.

Testing after Pandemic

Organizations are more prepared to deal with crisis and keep their business as usual (BAU) functional. It is no longer about choosing a testing project model. They have two models and multiple testing strategies based on their specific project requirements. Automation and manual testing go hand-in-hand and are applicable for many testing projects. The testing of banking or financial applications is exceptionally vital. Hence, it is necessary to have the most updated test automation tool to combine with the right test strategies, planning, and practice.

Organizations would not forsake either offshore or onsite testing models. Instead, both the testing model would act as a support to each other. Applying offshore testing proved to be a winning game for many organizations, as they succeeded in implementing the testing project and reap the benefits of offshore testing. Organizations have saved time and costs by adopting offshore test project models. Onsite testing is advisable when organizations have the in-house digital testing architecture to carry out the testing project. It is critical to have a compatible set-up of in-house architecture for the onsite testing model.

Conclusion –

After years of flourishing by offering onsite and offshore testing models to many organizations, Yethi has successfully delivered and completed 9+ offshore testing projects globally during pandemic 2020-2021. We are a niche QA services provider and have years of experience in delivering onsite & offshore testing projects. Having expertise in offering end-to-end testing services across all the major core banking applications with functional areas like Liabilities, Payments, Assets, Trade finance, Treasury and more, we have worked with 90+ clients across 22+ countries. We have not let our clients suffer from this unprecedented global situation and provided complete support to help banks avoid any business disruption and be prepared for any potential impact.

Our offshore testing model is designed considering all aspects like project knowledge, time constraint, travel restrictions, time zone differences and more. Our onsite and offshore testing models are managed by expert consultants and supervisors and backed by highly skilled resources and maestros in testing and programming to ensure that the testing projects are efficient and cost-effective.

Our highly experienced testing & digital consultants understand the processes and technologies involved in digital projects & quickly scale capacity to meet the needs of your business. Our dedicated offshore and onsite team can continue the workload with proper coordination, creating a continuous testing cycle.

We address the challenges of business continuity through our efficient testing models. Our 5th generation robotic codeless test automation tool Tenjin is built with intuitive features and supports our QA services. It is a fast and scalable test automation platform and works flawlessly across multiple applications to provide accurate test results.

Improving core banking implementation with a viable performance test approach

Core Banking

Banks and financial institutions are evolving to be more customer-friendly. They no longer need complicated applications & software, bulky systems, or multiple platforms to store customer and banks’ data, simply because it no longer serves the purpose. Hence, they opt for various core banking solutions, which help them bring all data onto a uniform platform and be more strategic and organized in maintaining the details.

Core banking implementation is a transformation journey for financial institutions. But 7 out of 10 banks go through many challenges during the different stages of the implementation project. These challenges include the non-functional aspects like stress, performance, or security penetration of the project. Let us look at the consequences of avoiding these mandatory checks. On a few specific days, banks may see a sudden spike in traffic; it can result in an extreme load on the system leading to performance failure.

In the past, several incidents were recorded where the customers were affected and disappointed with system performance failures. No banks can guarantee to function as usual with a massive surge in digital transaction volumes. Banks have realized the importance of testing the non-functional aspects of the systems, so today, it is an essential and integral part of any large-sized and mid-sized transformation project for banks.

We are a little far from realizing what performance testing means for a bank or financial institution. This article serves as a reference to improve core banking implementation with appropriate testing methodologies and a test automation approach. I will also explain why it is a critical exercise and cannot be cast aside until the last minute.

The important aspects of non-functional testing

A statistical report published in Gartner reveals that the average cost of IT downtime is around $5,600 per minute, which amounts to about $300,000 per hour on average. The calculation excludes regulatory penalties and reputational damage. This brings organizations to much deliberation about preventing downtime during production. The load testing helps an organization confirm that the systems are ready to take the usage load adequately to its capacity in the production stage.  

Knowing the objectives of performance testing

Performance testing measures the system behavior and response during peak activity hours. It ensures the consistency of the systems even with a high load. Performance testing also ensures that system performance does not deteriorate with time under average load and continuous usage. It determines the system sustainability, and if any performance bottleneck is detected or identified during testing, it must be reported and documented immediately. Performance testing also validates that the system and load is uniformly distributed across different product architectural layers. It also ensures that the system allows the access of multiple users at the same time and the system scalability to accommodate more users under the same sessions.

Performance testing scope

Performance testing becomes as essential process for a core banking implementation project and production lifecycle. It must cover all types of process activities including online transaction processing from systems interface and various channels, same day uploads, end of cycle batches, and data migration from legacy systems.

There are two methodologies for testing the core banking implementations, i.e., automated load testing and business simulation. In this article we will specifically talk about the first methodology.

Automated load testing

There are four phases of the automated load tests for performance testing.

  1. Designing phase

In the designing phase, the team gathers the requirements and studies them thoroughly to understand the scope and functionality of the application. They understand the performance requirements from a business viewpoint and analyze the matrix of business volume and historical data. The team finalizes the performance testing goals and objectives based on these requirements, finally measuring acceptable results. The automated load tests are designed, followed by an appropriate action plan.

  • Building phase

The channels and test scripts are prepared in batches for different business scenarios common to the user interface. The channels and batches test scripts are used to simulate load into the application tiers. An initial sanity check of the application is conducted after the data is migrated and uploaded onto the performance test platform. If there are remaining historical data to be created, they are injected into the system. During the build phase, the team configures the monitoring tools for gathering system performance metrics for the testing window.

  • Executing and diagnosing

The performance test is executed to validate environmental configurations and application performance behavior. Executing and diagnosing stage leads to an optimized environment for the final measurement run. Repeated performance testing is conducted to evaluate application performance behavior. There are three possible iterative stages which can be configured. And between each of these iterative stages, the team reinstates the performance testing, and the test is re-run again.

  1. Stage 1

The system behavior is recorded by executing the specific functions at the peak load. If any errors or flaws are noticed in environmental or application configurations, it is immediately reported to the respective stakeholders to upgrade and obtain maximum throughput.

  • Stage 2

In stage two, the system behavior is recorded along with the simulation of an integrated business scenario. Similar to stage one, if there are any errors or flaws in environmental or application configurations, they must be reported to respective stakeholders to upgrade and obtain maximum output.

  • Stage 3

The final round is a final round of simulation where all refinements / fine-tuning / fixes are updated from earlier test rounds and are validated. The load testing is executed at peak hours to ensure the resilience and stability of the system through volumes, endurance runs, and stress tests.

  • Measuring and evaluating

In the final measuring and evaluating phase the system metrics are captured and measured. The system testing is conducted to validate the metrics post-run. It is used to prepare the final performance test report.

Improving core banking implementation with Yethi’s testing services

At Yethi, we follow a strategic test objective. We capture non-functional requirements, set up a testing environment, script used cases, build scenarios, execute the test, and prepare PT documents based on reporting and analysis. We gather & analyze NFR, perform a feasibility study, and identify performance test tools. We set up server tier deployment, populate target database, populate target DB, external systems & licenses, and plan performance test strategy. We develop load test scripts, design load test scenarios, create test data, identify & build volume, soak, and stress scenarios. We determine and define the injector profile for injector deployment and timelines. We execute sanity, volume, isolation, stress, soak and load balancing tests.

When it comes to reporting and analyzing, we collect data samples, determine test outcomes by comparing expected performance, and maintain result reports and dashboards for all types of tests. We focus on the following,

  • Baseline Test – Measures the current performance metrics
  • Load Test – Create demand on a system and measure its response
  • Stress Test – Determine the stability of the system by testing beyond normal operational capacity
  • Soak Test – Run at high levels of load for prolonged periods.

Our performance test management is based on test execution and analysis and transaction capture and analysis. We capture and analyze transactions from applications under test (AUT) by pulling data from a web server, app server, and database server. And execute tests and analyses across various server systems through load injection and KPI monitoring. Our test management module focuses on creating and executing performance test scenarios and creating scenarios for different end-user activities against AUT.

We offer load injector and KPI monitoring as dedicated services to generate requests against AUT simulating concurrent virtual users, executing the specified use-cases. Through load injector and KPI monitoring, we collect performance metrics from all metrics collection agents and store them in the performance metrics repository. We collect load test results by Controller are stored in the result repository database. We execute performance testing for the application under test (AUT) and its components.

Is Offshore Testing Advisable for Your Business?

Testing advisable for your business

It is a sheer competency to handle the entire testing process from a location that is far away from the actual business site. Offshore testing or remote testing is a testing model where a company or an organization outsources the testing process to a team located in a different country. The doubt that sneaks in mind is offshore testing advisable for businesses? Can the resources, tools, and environment be favorable to carry on offshore testing without any disruption?

The business in the current scenario is reaping high benefits from this testing model, which means there’s something extremely advantageous about this arrangement. Offshore testing is increasing daily due to advancements in innovative technology facilitated by online tools. Offshore testing can be optimized with right software testing suite, skilled and expert testing team working remotely in highly competent and convertible environment.

Let us look at the benefits of Offshore testing team,

  1. Deploying a testing team at the business site will need organizations to make necessary arrangements. It requires organizations to set up an infrastructure suitable for testing projects, arranging a place in the office set up for the testing team, in addition to the obvious ones like travelling and staying arrangements. With the offshore testing model, organizations can take the stress out of the equation as the testing team will execute the end-to-end testing process from a remote location. Hence, Offshore testing is a cost-efficient option for any business.
  2. By outsourcing the testing projects offshore, the management team frees up the resources to focus on other priorities. Resources within the organization may have expertise in other domain areas. By outsourcing the testing projects, the organizations can delegate their team to different domain verticals to build expertise.
  3. The offshore testing model is a leap toward digitalization as the organizations’ core application is tested by other software around the clock.
  4. By outsourcing the testing projects, organizations can save time and focus on other areas of business that require close attention.
  5. Offshore testing expedites the software development process. In an ideal scenario like this, the testing and development process occur simultaneously, allowing the organization to speed up the software development process and leave it with the offshore testing team to do the rest.

How effective an Offshore testing team is?

An organization looks for the potential, experience, and expertise when choosing an offshore testing team. An offshore testing team is also selected based on similar projects they have executed in the past. In an ideal offshore testing model, the team focuses on quality assurance services to determine whether the software meets the predefined requirement. Organizations clearly define the benchmark for the projects, which they share with the offshore team.

The offshore testing team must be competent enough to execute end-to-end testing, including functional and non-functional testing. The testing project is strategically managed by a dedicated Test Centre of Excellence consisting of skilled and proficient test consultants. From test planning and designing to test execution, everything is done at the beginning of project inception to ensure that the offshore testing team achieves success in offering maximum benefits of the testing practices.

The offshore testing team focuses much on integration with the core enterprise applications and tests them at the integration points because it combines the different units, modules, and components of the software as a group to evaluate the specified functional requirements. Offshore testing is an effective process as it aims at achieving the highest benefits for the organization by significantly investing a lesser cost for the testing practice. It allows the testing process to take place in different geographical locations rather than appointing an in-house testing team.

It is important for businesses to transform digitally. It aims at ensuing end user experience with infrastructure, processes, and tools to enable rapid delivery of product value to consumers. The offshore testing occurs at the digital level, which ensures brand consistency across multiple channels and consumer platforms. It focuses on delivering better value quickly and more efficiently. Offshore allows application testing on different device configurations so that newer technologies are being adopted at a much faster pace.

As the development processes are becoming more Agile, testers are adopting the DevOps methodologies to meet the need of shorter and faster development cycles. Offshore testing allows organizations to reduce the turnaround time and improve the speed of release code to production. Offshore testing resources can prove to be efficient and cost effective lowering the expenses approximately by 30%-40% than onsite resources. The process is managed by a team who is expert, skilled, and knowledgeable.

Is Offshore Testing Advisable for Your Business?

In this business world, all organizations do not have enough resources for testing their product, software, etc. In such a case, offshore testing is the best option rather than appointing in-house teams, resources, etc. Sometimes it is challenging for a group of 5-7 testers to manage tests, find out bugs, check duplication and provide code reviews; for all such types of tasks, it is best to do offshore testing by transferring data to other departments located in different countries. An offshore testing team,

  • Provides a pool of expert testers:

A pool of expert testers is the only one who works for the testing project and acquiring test services from an organization with a pool of expert testers is lucky for them. Such testers work on performance testing and provide comprehensive results, which are error-free and give great market hits. An organization should hire an offshore testing company that will provide them with specialist suggestions to make the testing strategy more efficient and effective.

  • Provides quick results:

An organization can get faster results of its testing by acquiring offshore testing services within a fixed period. A specialized company will do testing, and specialized experts in their tasks give quick results with improvements.

  • Is Cost-effective:

In in-house testing, an organization must bear a high cost in appointing expert testers, purchasing software testing tools, paying them salaries, etc. This will be a significant burden on the organizations, especially those who have started their business recently. Offshore testing is the best alternative for them and saves all costs an organization bears in in-house testing.

  • Saves plenty of time:

Offshore testing saves time in two ways. First, the offshore staff uses those instruments and techniques with their experts to make data error-free and work on quality improvement, saving much time. Second, an organization can direct human and production resources to focus on the company’s main activities. So, offshore testing is also the best option for organizations that require quality assurance services.

  • Focus on the development of software products:

In offshore testing, the experts only focus on developing, improving, and focusing on the sales and marketing strategy of a product. When the right people are working on the right domain, the product will be highly beneficial for the marketing concerns and increases sales.

  • Bug free software:

The offshore expert testers are those who guarantee bug-free software. Testing is done by qualified staff who are experts in their work. Along with in-house testing, it is a comprehensive task for the appointed experts because they are not that many experts like the offshore testers.

  • Uninterrupted work cycles:

The offshore work team will consistently work on a particular task uninterruptedly because it is the primary and only task of the offshore experts. In in-house testing, there is the full involvement of the organization managers, workers, directors in their performed tasks, which will result in delayed results and interrupted work cycles.

The benefits of offshore testing are discussed above, which is advisable for businesses also. The decision of offshore testing is in the hands of the company and an organization. A product is more liked by the customers, which qualified experts and all the necessary already test and valuable changes are made at every level of the product. Testing like functional testing, integration testing, performance testing, acceptance testing, UI/UX testing, and Daily Regression Test Run can be done in various modules and multi-device configuration led by the expert test engineers.

Why Yethi for offshore testing?

Yethi’s each offshore project is headed by an expert consultant working seamlessly with your onsite team. We can quickly scale capacity to meet the needs of your business. Additionally, by harnessing Time Zone differences, we can jointly create a continuous testing cycle. As soon as your team concludes their working day, the offshore team can continue the workload in a seamless and coordinated manner. Our highly experienced testing & digital consultants understand the processes and technologies involved in digital projects. They possess best practices skills gained from continual training and development as well as real-world experience working with clients across a variety of domains in the Banking and Financial Services space. In today’s challenging environment, the challenges of business continuity can be addressed through offshore testing of the digital platform.

Yethi’s codeless test automation platform, Tenjin, is a plug-and-play banking aware solution, with distinctive features like robotic capabilities to learn the application and re-learn after any updates, so regardless of the complexity and number of updates, the test execution is fast, minimizing manual effort. Tenjin works flawlessly across multiple applications. It is developed with cutting edge technology yet is business user-friendly and requires minimal tech skills to handle the tool. It works seamlessly both in a traditional waterfall model and agile mode. Yethi’s substantial repository of more 8.5 million test cases to test multiple global banking software platforms with ease. Tenjin delivers automation in test portfolios, agility of in-sprint regression testing and up to 35% reduction in cost & cycle time using risk-based testing methodologies.

Conclusion:

Offshore testing is an attractive option as the testing process is conducted by a highly skilled group of testers. Sometimes, it will be challenging for the organization to choose the best offshore testing company from the list of companies. When pricing is the critical factor of the organization, then offshore testing is often considered an advantage. The focus of offshore testing is to provide quality assurance services. It also works well with quantitative testing because it allows you to get data from a large sample size of test participants. In offshore testing data migration support plays a vital role.

Test Automation for Building Reliable Banking Systems

Test automation for reliable banking systems

Banking systems are far more developed with the latest technologies. Especially during the last decade, technological advancements have changed how we transact and interact with banks and financial institutions. Technology improvisation is not expected to end; with every passing day and year, it is now an essential aspect of our financial dealings.

By integrating banking transactions through mobile phones using UPI and NEFT payments, banking has moved another step towards digital advancement. While many third-party apps can connect to a bank account and make payments, some banking apps allow users to check the status of their cheques and card applications.

Digital transformation in banking is a matter of patience and caution. A mistake made in an online eight-ball game will not cause much damage, but software cannot be trusted with people’s money. Anything that goes wrong with transactions will directly be the bank’s fault, which can be detrimental for businesses.

Every software bundle that a financial institution releases must undergo a thorough testing process to ensure nothing goes wrong. In a growing business, software testing cannot wait for long days of testing or be prone to human errors. Therefore, banks and financial institutions are adopting codeless test automation. Test automation saves time, money, and effort, while codeless reduces human errors in the applications.

What is test automation and how can it help the banking sector?

Whenever organizations develop software, they do not directly release the initial version to the market. At least, strictly, not in the case of banking systems. The one place where you don’t want loopholes is in the software that connects to banking and financial archives.

The way financial institutions offer services has changed. With digitalization, financial services are more advanced. From how you avail services and access data to record transactions, everything must proceed with uniform speed while maintaining the quality of financial software and expenses. A financial sector is a place with humongous amounts of public data under a confidentiality contract, which means that if a bug in service causes loss of money, the bank can be defamed and sued.

Organizations must ensure that the applications offer outstanding customer experiences with real-time data. Real-time data must be safe and accessible to the customers to ensure complete customer satisfaction. This very reason creates a need for testing banking or financial software. Until codeless test automation came into the picture, the testing of such software was done by human eyes and brains, which were susceptible to many errors due to long test lines for running the whole testing program.

With maturity in machine learning, the linguistics of machines are now used to create a precise testing platform that allows faster, much more efficient testing of software and privatised control of the whole process.

How does Codeless test automation help financial institutions?

Codeless test automation is necessary for most core banking processes like loan origination. Loan origination and trading are some of the most affected areas of the industry. Such core banking operations require faster software development and a stable system to handle a plethora of tasks, all at once. In a world where a single rating on the Play Store matters, a few unsatisfied users might create a bad image with negative reviews. To understand why the financial service industry requires end-to-end codeless test automation, we need to know the requirements of financial software:

  • The application must be multi-utility and flexible to handle several multi-tier user requests at any given point in time.
  • The app must safely integrate with third-party apps on a large scale.
  • The app must deploy secure transactions with end-to-end data encryption.
  • The servers of the application must be secured enough to keep personal information hidden.
  • The application must be synced in real-time with the archives to make quick transactions.
  • The software must be stable enough to perform several transactions within a short time duration.
  • The app must record every detail from all transactions and store them securely on the user’s device or cloud.
  • The software must be able to troubleshoot queries raised by the customers.
  • The app must have a fail-safe system to protect the users from emergencies like device theft or data attacks.

Here are some of the core banking segments that require codeless test automation:

●       Trading

The world of Wall Street and many forexes rely on secure, real-time data and money transfers because people’s hard-earned money is at stake. In such a complex game of numbers and sales, a minor glitch in the system or algorithm would cause chaos for thousands. Codeless test automation makes sure that the software is tested in the most complex of conditions to make it fail-safe.

●       Digital banking

Banks have come a long way from transfer and withdrawal slips. Payments are being made on phones using QR codes, and business is being conducted on current digital accounts—that too with a bank with no branches. When an entire bank promises core banking from anywhere and everywhere, the whole banking framework depends on the software. With codeless tests, banking automation can turn branches and passbooks obsolete.

●       Loan origination

The entire process of loan origination, from the applicant to the lender to the credit score calculators and back to the applicant, is a long, complex operation. The credit market is the most fluctuating market and needs secure and accurate data for confirmation. Loan origination can benefit from proper assessment and credibility of the applicant, enhancing the user experience on both sides. With codeless test automation, the application becomes error-free and helps make accurate lending decisions for financial institutions.

Choosing the right framework

As a financial institution, the software you introduce cannot be open ware. A banking institution is mandated to hide its clients’ crucial and private data. With codeless test automation, the control of the software while it is connected to a network shall be in safe hands. You can choose what functions need to be automated and which ones are to be kept on hold. For testing such software, the testing framework needs to be hybrid or library-based, so it can be customised frequently with changing data-sharing norms.

Conclusion

Codeless test automation can help transform the banking sector by creating reliable banking systems that have become the need of the hour. Most of the banking processes can be streamlined to provide improved services and better customer satisfaction, leading to the overall growth of the sector.

At Yethi, we focus on improving the efficiency of the organization’s core software system. Being a niche QA service provider, we have helped and are helping several global banking/financial organizations increase the agility, consistency, and accuracy of their platform. With our efficient test automation solution.

Tenjin is an easy-to-integrate, codeless automation platform. This revolutionary solution has taken the test automation to next level with an accuracy rate of nearly 100%. It is designed to rapidly scan through the software and detect errors. This innovative platform works 3x times faster than any other automated testing system, while the simple plug-in and play design enable easy integration. Tenjin is developed with a focus on continuously helping banks and financial institutions across the globe to build a robust and resilient testing process.

CI For Automation Testing Framework

Let us consider that you have a critical project idea, and you want to set up an automation testing framework. A complex mobile application will need a lot of iteration right from the beginning. The complexities of the application may arise due to frequent changes in functionalities, adding new features, and running regression frequently to validate the changes. This will sway your project back and forth, consuming time, money, and effort, and the result will not equal up the effort made.

To end all the confusion, CI (continuous integration)/ CD (continuous deployment or delivery) is introduced at the very beginning of the software development lifecycle. The process offers a stable development environment and facilitates the automation testing framework with speed, safety, and reliability. It eliminates the challenges like lack of consistency and the numerous errors that arise due to human intervention of an application development process, ensuring that the users receive an error-free, end-product with a seamless user experience.  

What is CI/CD?

Technically speaking, CI/CD is a method that is frequently used to deliver apps to customers by using automation early in the app development stage. The main concepts associated with CI/CD include continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment.

We can think of it as a solution to various problems for the development and operations team while integrating new code.

With the introduction of CI/CD, developers have ongoing automation and continuous monitoring during the lifecycle of an application – be it the integration phase, testing phase, or delivery and deployment phase.

When we combine all these practices, it can be called the ‘CI/CD pipeline.’ Both development and operation teams work together in an agile way, either through a DevOps approach or site reliability engineering (SRE) approach.

Automation testing in CI/CD

Automation testing in CI/CD helps the QA engineers define, execute, and automate various tests. These tests allow the developers to access the performance of their applications in an innovative manner.

It can tell them whether their app build has passed or failed. Moreover, it can help in functionality testing after every sprint and regression for complete software.

Regression tests can run on their local environments before sending the code to the version control repository to save the team’s time.

However, automation testing isn’t confined to regression tests. Various other tests, such as static code analysis, security testing, API testing, etc., can be automated.

The central concept is to trigger these tests through web service or other tools that can result in success or failure.

Test automation framework runs on a set of guidelines, rules, and regulations. DevOps team needs to implement a proper test strategy following these guidelines, rules, and regulations before they start the testing process. They have to set the process right and decide when to introduce CI during the entire software testing lifecycle, when to start the execution, and the deployment process. Some of the key points to consider:

  • Evaluating test automation frameworks: Ensuring codeless representation of automated tests, that support data-driven tests, and concise reporting.
  • Choose the test automation framework based on the requirement: The different types of test automation framework include modular testing framework, data-driven framework, keyword-driven framework, and hybrid framework.
  • Defining the objective for automation: This is an important step where the objective of the test automation must be set clear. It includes choosing the right tools, skillsets, framework, current requirements, and considering the future trends.
  • Defining the benefits of the automation framework: Considering the benefits of the automation framework for faster test script creation, longer automation span, easy maintenance, reusability probability, and good data migration support.
  • Automation compliance: Testing the software for the latest regulatory compliance.

Benefits of deploying a CI/CD pipeline in automation testing framework

Wondering why a team should work on CI/CD pipeline? Here are some of the benefits associated with it:

  • Boosts DevOps efficiency

In the absence of CI/CD, developers and engineering teams are under immense pressure while carrying out their daily tasks. It could be due to service interruptions, outages, and bad deployments.

With the help of CI/CD, teams can eliminate manual tasks and thereby prevent coding errors. In addition, it will help them detect problems before deployment. This way, teams can work faster without having to compromise on the quality. Furthermore, since the manual tasks are automated, the release rates also decrease.

  • Smaller code changes

A significant technical benefit of CI/CD is that it helps integrate small pieces of code at one time. Therefore, it gets much easier and simpler to handle as compared to huge chunks of code. Also, there will be fewer issues to be fixed at a later stage.

With the help of continuous testing, these small codes can be tested as soon as they are implemented. It is a fantastic approach for large development teams working remotely or in-office.

  • Freedom to experiment

The CI/CD approach helps developers experiment with various coding styles and algorithms with much lesser risk than traditional software development paradigms.

If the experiment does not work as expected, it won’t ever appear in the production and can be undone in the next iteration set. This feature of competitive innovation is a decisive factor behind the fame of the CI/CD approach.

  • It improves reliability

With the help of CI/CD, you can improve test reliability to a great extent. It is because specific and atomic changes are added to the system. Therefore, the developers or QAs can post more relevant positive and negative tests for the changes. This testing process is also known as ‘Continuous Reliability’ within a CI/CD pipeline. This approach helps in making the process more reliable.

  • Customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is an essential aspect of the success of any product or application. It is a crucial factor that should be considered while releasing a new app or updating an existing one.

With the help of CI/CD, bugs are fixed while it is still in the development phase. Through automated Software Testing for Continuous Delivery, the feedback from the users is easier to integrate into the system. When you offer bug-free and quick updates on your app, it will help boost customer satisfaction.

  • Reduces the time to market

Another essential feature that makes CI/CD popular is the deployment time. The time to market plays a crucial role in the success of your product release. It helps increase engagement with your existing customers, gain more profit, support pricing, and get more eyeballs.

When you launch the product at the right time in the market, the product’s ROI will surely increase.

These are just a few benefits of CI/CD. It isn’t just a tool for software development but also an approach to set your business as a leader in the market.

Conclusion

CI/CD is an essential aspect of software building and deployment. It facilitates building and enhancing great apps with faster delivery time. Furthermore, continuous testing automation enables the app to go through the feedback cycle quicker and build better and more compatible apps.

Why Yethi for your projects?

Organizations need strategies and a customized testing environment to offer continuous testing with every integration and deployment. You cannot go wrong with the implementations. Our approach towards building an automation testing framework is agile. We offer continuous testing for all your integration and deployment ensuring that you get a stable, safe, and scalable product. The robotic capabilities of Tenjin – our codeless test automation platform, which enable to learn and adapt to the application and its updates. Tenjin, is a plug-and-play banking aware solution, continuous testing, minimizing the manual effort and speed up the test execution regardless of the complexity and number of updates.