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Test Automation evg Oct 11 Belfast

Date/Time: Thursday, October 11 2007, 5-8pm

Venue: Malone House, Barnett Demesne Belfast

Talks

1. Test Automation - And What We Can Learn from That

Speaker:

Jiri Machala


Summary:

Learning Objectives:
  • Getting an understanding of automation testing in localisation and its application to source testing
  • What works, what does not
  • What are some of the best practices leading software producers have adopted in this area through case studies
  • What can innovation in automation testing bring to core product testing
  • Brief overview of the FaultFinder tool that complements general automation testing
Abstract:
The constant pressure to shorten testing cycles and to increase productivity in testing means that test automation has become an essential feature in many if not most application testing processes today.

When automation is deployed in the area of localisation testing, the objective is to ensure the quality of the product localised into another target language and/or locale. Here, the focus is typically on GUI testing of the localised product and its functional testing.

In recent months, Moravia has applied automation in a number of different test areas. Here we would share our hands-on experience and best practices specifically in the following 3 areas:
  1. Scanners testing - how to automate functionality testing here
  2. Screenshots - how to automate the screenshooting process for creating source and target documentation or help systems
  3. Source and target product testing - a case study for a CAD/CAM application
In addition to providing practical overviews of these 3 applications of automation within testing, we will also provide our perspective of the build-or-buy decision in this area - an overview of internally-developed versus industry-available automation tools.

2. Strategies and Opportunities for Test Automation

Speaker:

Ken Brennock


Summary:

When you mention automation everybody tends to sit up and listen. With tag lines like 'Reduce Costs', 'Reduce Time-To-Market', 'Improve Quality' and 'Easy of Use', it is easy to see why Test Automation has been seen as the Holy Grail of testing in the software development lifecycle. But, despite the well recognised issues with introducing and implementation test automation, companies still seem to make the same mistakes, and fail to get the improvements they are looking for.
This forum will discuss the view that organisations are not using the correct paradigm when thinking of test automation. That most organisations take the view that testing is something that is done at the end of development, and testing is the sole responsibility of the testing department. As a result of this model a lot of effort organisations put into automation is in the test department and at system test stage, which may not be an appropriate or effective way to get value from automation.

The facilitated discussion will cover:
  • Where is automation being used in organisations
  • Successful and not so successful examples
  • Why these tools were successful or not
  • What are the types of tools being used
  • Commercial Tools
  • Open-source
  • Home Grown
  • What are the blocks to using automation?