Quick overview: the main challenges in E2E testing
In my previous blog post, I already explained some of the main challenges that large companies face during their digital transformations. For a quick overview, I list them again below:
Challenge 1
There are usually multiple teams working on a project (delivery) and using different development methodologies: Waterfall and Agile. While Waterfall teams wait for a so-called code freeze phase to be able to test, such a phase does not occur in Agile teams. In fact, Agile teams never stop working on the code.
Challenge 2
Each group usually stores all its test artefacts in its own test database (= repository). The test artefacts can therefore not be reused by other teams, and the E2E test cases must either be rebuilt manually or exported into an additional repository dedicated only to E2E testing.
Challenge 3
With the redistribution of roles in Agile teams, many organizations are in the dark about E2E testing responsibilities. Additional hours need to be planned around the questions of which team or team member(s) should take care of release testing and how the whole process should be orchestrated.
Challenge 4
It is always a challenge to find one person who knows the whole system in detail. This lack of cross-system knowledge hinders the project’s overall progress and might lead to frustration among the teams.
The power of NextendIT
All the above-mentioned challenges hinder projects and eventually lead to frustration. This is why NextendIT was born – to tackle all those challenges and help businesses accelerate the delivery of high-quality projects.
To best ensure this, NextendIT is designed as a package that provides our customers with both a technical solution and an outlet that closes any knowledge gaps.
Faster release, consistent quality
With NextendIT, we enable the automation of cross-team E2E testing, regardless of the project’s extent. Until now, this was not technically feasible with the test artefacts stored in different repositories. However, NextendIT makes it possible.
We go far beyond test automation with NextendIT and thus get the most out of testing. Release testing (or E2E testing) is drastically accelerated by automating executions, QA activities, and parts of operation. At the same time, NextendIT ensures good quality of the products and services of our clients. The most important aspects that NextendIT automates are:
- the decision-making in quality gates
- the (scheduled) execution of any E2E scenario
- the execution’s retry of any E2E scenario
But is automation alone enough to skyrocket delivery and maintain quality?
Automating tests, QA processes, and parts of operations is already a big step forward. Nevertheless, we want to get as much as possible out of our customers’ projects with NextendIT. For this reason, testing with NextendIT is not only automated but also risk-based.
The new focus allows the teams or members responsible for E2E testing to prioritize their E2E flows by business risks. They can choose which part of the release needs to be tested and when. It is therefore not necessary to test all E2E flows all the time anymore. This way, excess effort for the execution of all E2E flows as well as additional analysis of test cases is eliminated.
Once the E2E flows are stored in the form of E2E chains(*), they can be viewed at any time on one of the three dashboards in NextendIT and executed as required.
Minimize maintenance and investigation efforts
In addition to advanced automation and a risk-based testing focus, our solution also makes all teams’ test artefacts reusable. This not only simplifies the work of the teams but also saves a lot of time, as the effort for system maintenance and faulty test case investigation is significantly reduced. This is how:
Our customers’ teams only need to adapt slightly to make their test artefacts reusable with NextendIT. They can simply continue to use Tosca as their usual tool for functional testing and continue to store all their respective test artefacts in their Tosca test repositories. However, with our orchestrator, the teams can share individual test artefacts with all other teams by importing them into NextendIT with just a few clicks. These imported elements are synchronized with those in the Tosca repositories and are therefore always up-to-date.
What if a team applies changes to their test cases?
Generally, each team is responsible for creating, updating, importing, and removing its own test artefacts into NextendIT. The test artefacts should therefore always be up-to-date.
Nonetheless, if there are changes to components that are not imported into NextendIT yet, their execution will fail. Normally, teams would now spend hours analyzing the faulty test cases, but with NextendIT this is no longer necessary. Here, all the teams have to do is click on the detailed view of the affected E2E chain. In it, they find further information about the reason for the failure. It is therefore only necessary to create user stories for the missing automation parts and distribute them to the respective teams.
Our goal with NextendIT
In our years of experience, we have repeatedly faced the same hurdles as described above. Since there has been no solution that simplifies release management activities and optimizes resources, we have decided to develop one.
With NextendIT, we want to help our customers establish the testOps methodology in their companies and thus get the most out of their projects. We want to enable all kinds of corporations to achieve agility and to write success stories that are appreciated by their end customers.
Our experts guide our customers through the application, improve the testing process, so it fits the modern market requirements, and additionally provide them with the needed knowledge via different trainings, so they can carry the project by themselves in the future. So, the overall goal is to enable a quick release of quality products and services while closing any knowledge gaps to help our customers develop in-house experts.
If you are interested in learning more about NextendIT, don’t hesitate to reach out to us! We would like to talk about your individual, desired project and show you how we can support you with our testOps orchestrator.
Footnote:
(*) Chains are containers holding all components of an E2E flow and quality gates, and therefore represent E2E flows.
