Maximize efficiency, speed, and stability
Tosca brings a lot of advantages to a testing team, from automated test cases to a whole integrated test management. It supports multiple technologies and therefore opens the door to new opportunities for your agile teams.
Today, I want to share my top three tips on how to use the Tosca automation tool to achieve higher efficiency, better stability and – you guessed it – accelerated speed in your agile projects.
TIP NUMBER 1
Involve API testing
First and foremost, I recommend you, when it is possible, to switch your functional testing from the GUI level to the API level. You will quickly discover that it allows you to achieve stable and fast test executions.
During UI testing, there is always the possibility of test executions breaking due to some kind of disturbance or shortage of the test system. Fortunately, this does not happen in the level of web services. So, by moving functional testing from the GUI layer to the web services layer, you highly improve the speed and stability of your executions. At the same time, you additionally reduce the hours spent on investigation of so-called false positives (when your test cases fail because of changes in the system, not because of defects) on the next day.
Why Tosca?
As you may have guessed, Tosca can be easily used as a tool for API testing as well.
As the tool can combine various technologies in one single test case, you can easily build contract and even E2E test cases. It is no longer necessary to refer to several software testing tools to test different layers of the application. When you use Tosca, you only need to make sure that you comprehend this one tool.
TIP NUMBER 2
Use test design
Secondly, I highly recommend using test design capabilities from the very beginning, as they really decrease your maintenance work. The Tosca automation tool offers its users the opportunity to create their test scenarios even before there is any functionality built in the application.
This is a very powerful feature! On the one hand, it embraces parallel work with developers, and on the other hand, you start preparing your test cases for future expansion, which is usually the case in agile projects.
Usually, in an agile project, one functionality or business flow is built in several sprints. It is normal that your test cases multiply themselves over time. The longer your project, the higher the chance of them expanding more and more.
Test design is an investment into the future.
Even if you might start with only one test case in your sprint, you need to have in mind that the functionality and therefore the test cases will grow in the near future. This is where test case design comes in very useful.
By using it, you ensure that your agile teams work with a framework that allows them to adjust their test scenarios and add new ones with as little effort as possible with every new sprint and you will not waste time in reworking your test cases.
TIP NUMBER 3
Set up nightly executions
Every software is a living system, which means that it is constantly changing, every day. The same applies to its test cases.
Setting up nightly executions with the Tosca testing tool is my third tip to improve your agility. They allow you to get immensly fast feedback from the system under test.
Regular updates and fast reactions play a crucial role in speed.
Assuring that you execute your automated tests on a daily basis gives you the possibility to not only test the system but also to know whether some change has been introduced to the system, along with the current status of its test cases.
Getting feedback of test executions in such short intervals gives you the chance to detect not only defects and missed changes but decreasing the time execution investigation and restoring your test cases.
Working with small junks every day actually gives you the confidence that your test cases are always up to date, while reducing false positives.
The future-proof package you need
Nowadays, it is a fact that working quickly and efficiently is indispensable. In order to pick them up, we consider Tosca as a proper tool for it.
This is why, at nextpertis, we ensure that each of our experts is fully proficient in both the Agile test methodology and the Tosca framework. After years of experience, we can only recommend starting your digital modernization and appropriation of the tool to anyone who has not yet done so.
