Test Automation

Test automation is nothing new, it’s been around for over for 20 years. It’s disciplined, repetitive, structured and processes are well documented – but only lives in test and pre-production environments.

That sounds amazing similar to RPA. It’s disciplined, repetitive, structured and well documented – lives in testing, pre-production and production environments.

Most organisations have a rich repository of previously used testing documents that could be used to fast-track their Enterprise RPA/AI Journey – past/current test cases, regressions test cases and technical/ business post implementation verification test cases forms a brilliant library of opportunity for your RPA Roadmap.

The contents of this repository can easily be formed into an Intelligent Automation (RPA/AI/Testing) priority list highlighting those processes to automate through RPA first providing the best benefits for Business, IT and customers.

When reviewing these documents you quickly start identifying many of these test case documents have detailed outlines of step by step processes that is performed by a business unit by way of a human process either fully or part manual. These documents also outline key business rules (e.g a certain field must numeric only with 6 digits) required to ensure quality and accuracy. The documents also contain a number of key performance measures (e,g response times) that outlines the bench marks and standards that application and infrastructure teams use to measure the on-going operational performance.

Question: So can RPA tools automate test cases and if so, what would it deliver over traditional testing tools?

Answer: It addresses numerous constraints and challengers being faced by many companies, such as:

Helps address the RPA/AI skills shortages as testers make good RPA developers.
Creates a champion in every department and business unit.
Starts an enterprise-level strategy involving all areas of the business.
Reduces the risk of everyone doing their own thing – redundant and duplicated efforts.
Bring the business, IT Infrastructure and application teams together.
Multi-use benefits (automating a business process, automating test use cases, regression test, business PIV, IT PIV and alerting)
Improves collaboration within an organisation.
Introduce a coordinated enterprise approach that will lead to consistent technologies, resources and governance.

Question: How are the automation goals different between the Business and IT?

Answer: They actually aren’t different, they both want to:

Improve the customer experience
Reduce repetitive manual tasks.
Improve consistency and errors by reducing manual intervention.
Increase the capacity and available working hours
Ensure all targeted work has been completed
Reduce costs.

Question: Do Business and IT have similar obstacles?

Answer: They do have similar challenges:

Testing – unable to test applications quickly which means they are not completing as many tests as they would like.
Business – Not able to resource up quickly to meet demand and/or growth.
Testing – lag time in bringing in more resources to test for additional projects.
Both – knowledge sits within the team and there is a risk of losing knowledge when resources depart.
Testers and business SME’s need to be available to test at odd hours and during the weekend on a regular basis for technical and business post implementation verification.