Regression Testing is a necessary evil. Testing the same functionality over and over again just to see that the results are exactly the same and all systems are go. This is where the dream of automation fits like a glove, you script and automate these regression tests and with a click of a button you save all these hours of ERP testing.
And… it comes bundled with a 2nd dream, to be able to identify an impact based on what scripts failed to run automatically.
The Stark Reality of Test Automation
Per my experience, the stark reality is that most businesses who have invested in Test Automation were able to automate 20-30% of their business processes and as such, it cannot be used to know what’s impacted and should be tested.
What limits organizations from automating their entire portfolio of business processes are the main following reasons:
- Breaking down and documenting the business processes and their endless permutations, is a huge undertaking in a dynamic environment
- The challenge does not end there, again, considering the dynamic nature of the business, keeping the automated scripts updated for the long run is effort consuming and costly
- Transforming the documented processes into automated scripts requires a very specific (and expensive) skillset.
For the above reasons, most companies who use automated testing, will focus on automating the more static processes, and those flows that are absolutely critical to their organization (and even these are not 100% covered). The additional 70% of business flows, will still be carried manually.
So, how does Panaya compliment test automation?
Panaya automated the process of impact analysis, accelerates the creation of automated scripts as well as accelerate the 70% of tests that will continue to be handled manually:
- Impact Analysis for any EBS change – regardless of the state of automation – Panaya will show you what you need to test, focusing your efforts on which functions to test and which scenario to test with (The impacted areas can be tested both manually with Panaya or by running the relevant automation scripts).
- Reducing Business Disruption –Panaya Test Builder automatically captures in great detail how the end user uses the system, in a human readable way, so that it can be then be given to an automation engineer for scripting – without interruption to the users day to day work flow.
- Enabling IT/Business User Collaboration – The remaining manual efforts will be greatly accelerated using Panaya’s Test Center, as Panaya validates for you which process needs to be tested, at what time, automatically communicates it to the business owner and… the test evidence are automatically captured for future reference.
- Project transparency – Panaya provides you with real time project progress monitoring, so you always know how well you are doing and how much is yet to be tested up to the completion for each project.