Codeless Test Automation With a Global Healthcare Company

Challenge

A global healthcare company approached WWT with a desire to reduce its software release cycle time by implementing functional test automation and alleviating manual regression testing. When the time came to implement the test automation strategy for the client, the WWT delivery team initially started to explore a common solution of Selenium tests written in JavaScript. After spending a few days building out a proof of concept with the solution, we presented this to the client as our preferred approach. Unfortunately, we were met with a bit of resistance. The global healthcare company had a staff of automation engineers that were trained in C# running on Selenium so they were hesitant to learn a new language and transfer that knowledge across their organization. This is a common challenge in the industry – the best tool may not fit the skillset of the staff that will inherit the testing suite. In cases like this, our teams need to adjust their approach even if it means using a suboptimal or less-modern toolset compared to what we would recommend. 

As different automation options were being discussed, the client began to consider other ways to implement automated testing across their organization. How could they quickly develop test suites without the cost of educating staff on writing automated tests in a new coding language? As they thought through this challenge, the proposal of codeless automation tools was brought up and explored. This would allow a wider group of people beyond the development team, with less technical skill, to begin writing tests with lower overhead training costs. 

Solution

As the research into codeless test automation began, the client explored a variety of tools by either a hands-on approach or performing research of the tools online. They investigated a dozen codeless and hybrid solutions and ultimately landed on Telerik's Test Studio. The other frontrunners that were not selected were Endtest, Leapwork, and Testim. Test Studio met the customer's desired capabilities and functional requirements - its ease-of-use was more appealing than the other options evaluated. Another factor in the decision is that Test Studio is a hybrid tool. The option of adding test code written in C# was of high value to the customer, as they would be able to reuse some of the helper classes and methods that they already had from their existing software test automation framework. Other factors considered were Test Studio's Record & Play ability, Azure DevOps CI integration support, and hybrid scripting using JS, C#, and VB.net. 

The decision was made by the client to begin using Telerik's Test Studio and WWT started to build the test suite. There was a learning curve in understanding and how to effectively use the tool's features. Some key best practices we implemented included: 

• Setting up shared tests or "helper methods" for repeated steps within tests.
• Renaming elements within the test to more accurately represent what the test is doing.
• Properly developing coded steps (which was completed by pairing with the development staff).

As we iterated through developing the test automation suite, we continued to adjust when necessary. One of the adjustments made was building the tests in a local environment to allow the teardown of test data and restore our database quickly. Another way to integrate the tests into the client's Azure CI/CD deployment pipeline so the tests could be running as part of their build and deploy process. 

One of the limitations that we experienced with Test Studio included a lack of support for Mac users. We overcame this by installing Test Studio on a Virtual Machine and were able to run the application successfully in this setup. Secondly, Test Studio did not have headless browser execution during the time period of our engagement with the client (they have since added this feature to their tool). Test Studio has additional testing capabilities that we plan to explore in the coming year including automated performance, load and API tests. 

Results

Implementing automated tests using Test Studio for our global healthcare client was a positive experience. The ability to download Test Studio and start building tests in a relatively short amount of time was very beneficial. Coded steps were added to codeless tests which allowed complex scenarios to be covered. The client QA staff improved their technical skills by understanding how to write coded steps which would in turn help when automating future areas of the application. Test Studio met the needs of our client and was a solid product to use for developing functional automated tests. The software automation test suite created by WWT was implemented into the client's deployment pipeline and jumpstarted the client toward their goal of reducing their manual testing efforts and lowering their release cycle time.