Another success with Katalon Studio
Previously I made mentioned that we migrated from one web platform to another and Katalon was instrumental in running hundreds of tests to ferret out where we had data or code issues.
Right on the heels of that migration, we needed to do an a framework upgrade. In essence we had to run the same validation tests again to confirm we didn’t have any code or data issues.
The test suite has grown and includes several new tests, but still takes less than 10 minutes to run. Plus, when using the data driven test case I discussed earlier, this can be run for dozens of passes, one after the other, and we just check the Reports folder to see if there were any problems.
At the customer site, their QA resource wanted a minimum of a week to confirm the framework upgrade. I have to admit, my jaw dropped. I didn’t understand why it would take so long to go through a dozen or so passes with a mixture of users.
Then it dawned on me. He needs to validate the site manually as they aren’t using any automated methods. He needs to click each page, fill in the forms, drill down through each subpage and confirm everything loads and is visible. He then needs to compare data on one page to the information on another and calculate the totals of multiple columns.
Based on other commitments, that may only be 1 or 2 validation passes per day. In order to feel comfortable, they would need to confirm at least a dozen, and the more the better. The time quickly adds up and a week might only get the bare minimum done.
With the help of Katalon and what we have in place, I can perform a dozen validations per day, while I work on other projects. The tasks can be run in the background, on another screen or even headless and I just have to check the reports.
Since I’ve run these tests dozens of times already, I know what the reports should look like, so I can easily pick out any anomalies.
We are continually developing and refining our tests, but the time investment is paying off with multiple hours saved per validation pass. At our current rate, we only need a couple of hours to validate 90% of the site. That last 10% is for validating against source data. But since so much time is saved up front, even with that manual 10%, we can do all our validation and be confident in what we deliver within a day.
Plus, our development time is getting shorter each iteration as the code gets better and tighter and common routines get grouped together. Katalon is making some serious strides for us and to be honest, I feel we’ve only scratched the surface. I’m very excited over what we will have in place 6 months from now.
