Test Automation and Management

Most so-called automated software test systems require almost continuous attention from their human designers. Test suites take time to configure and launch, there is often conflict with IT over resources, and the staff is still spending valuable time trawling through log files. In short: for many development organizations, automated unit and system test environments are simply underperforming.

The business impact of pseudo-test automation:

• Wasted human effort
• Expensive hardware is underutilized
• One-off scripts hastily written amass into complexity that threatens the ship date

ElectricCommander provides efficient, effective unit and system test
automation by:

• Dynamically provisioning and configuring the target environment,
• Eliminating manual invocation of complex test suites,
• Transforming volumes of test result data into actionable metrics.

Challenge				Impact				Electric Cloud Solution
Hard to juggle and manage compute resources and configurations for testing				Lack of available resources slows cycles Tests may be skipped or not written				Dynamic resource management: Automatically queue and synchronize machines Select configurations on the fly from a pool of servers Instantiate VMs on demand Schedule system tests directly on physical devices
Time- and resource-intensive to run test harnesses				No common way to launch across enterprise Tests launched by error-prone manual process				Reusable automation: Define common options and setup in a central location Integrate multiple test frameworks into a single job Customize the UI to extract data from other systems
Difficult to interpret gigabytes of output per test				Difficult to discern real defects from spurious results Time-consuming and frustrating to debug				Flexible, customizable reporting: Automatically parse results and file a bug if errors are found Map test results to specific builds Monitor a test as it executes, estimate time to completion With one click access test output files from job status page
Defects often found late in the project cycle				Slow time to market and reduced software quality				Test as part of an automated agile workflow: Execute tests and static analysis "upstream" as a standard component of every build cycle Enable developer preflight builds and tests across all targets/platforms Facilitate easy bug triage via Integrations with defect tracking systems Customize UI to show build id, changelist, defects and resolutions in single dashboard

Learn more about how ElectricCommander helps drive fast, effective test automation.