Open Source testing tools have long dominated the test automation market, with millions of users leveraging the most popular frameworks such as Selenium and Appium. While these tools offer a promising array of features at a low price point, they often come with a number of new challenges that must be solved to achieve automation maturity. These challenges can surface both with teams looking to implement automation for the first time as well as teams transitioning from established legacy/closed source automation tools. In our experience with thousands of teams adopting open source for the first time, users will face inevitable challenges in implementing these tools.
Takeaways from your topic
Authoring: how to build the number of tests needed, especially when agile and devops are increasing the rate of new feature delivery. Teams can empower non-technical testers with appropriate tools to widen the number of potential contributors.
Maintenance: how to structure tests in the optimal way to reduce test breakage, and limit the amount of time needed to fix broken tests. Teams can utilize a test structure which allows for easy reuse of code to eliminate maintenance time and potential breakages.
Collaboration: how to make sure that testers are set up to share assets and work in a way that allows teams to create value together. Teams can leverage a centralized repository of modular assets which are easy to find and tailor to their specific use case.
Parallelization: how and when to use the capability of running tests in parallel to reduce the time needed to execute a test suite. Teams can build their own infrastructure or leverage shared cloud infrastructure to accelerate test execution.
Reporting: how to assess the results of executed tests and communicate them to the other tools in the CI/CD pipeline. Teams have several options of metrics to track and means to capture and share this information with appropriate stakeholders.
Kevin Dunne
