UI automation testing and the development process

[Ronan Dalton]

Hoping there are some folks out there that can share experience – I’ve just read through this developerWorks article; https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/j-test/

There’s a concept outlined in the article that suggests automated UI testing should be incorporated into the development process and that ‘ideally, the concept of a functional testing group should disappear’. Are there teams/organisations that you know of that have already embraced this practice, tasking development groups with the creation of both unit test and automated UI tests ?

I’d be interested to read your opinions on this topic and learn from your experience !

Thanks,

Ronan.

[Simon]

Did you link the right article?

[Prashant]

Yes I think you mislinked the article. Do you mean to say the website UI testing? We have implemented this practice of Web UI comparison with our own tool TestingWhiz.

[Lada]

I think the right article is linked. It’s about how unit and functional tests are similar and that they don’t have to be done by separate groups of people. I found the article really interesting, but don’t have experience with this to share.

[Ronan Dalton]

Thanks Lada – you’re right, the link in my initial post is correct. Glad you found the article interesting and also that you got the point ! I’ve since spoke with some teams inside my own organisation who have adopted the approach of development teams owning both the unit and UI automation tests for a delivery. In reality, it’s not the developers who write the UI automation tests, but specialist testers embedded inside a multi-disciplinary delivery team (aka scrum teams). As such, the concept of the functional test group does disappear, but the functional tester lives on, albeit working in a focussed automation role !

Again, I’d be keen to understand others experience here.

[Author]

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