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.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

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2 thoughts on “Another success with Katalon Studio

    • Author gravatar

      Hi Don, I just started following your blog in regards to katalon.

      I want to introduce katalon studio at my work we do manual testing at work at the moment.

      What approach I should use for proof of concept with katalon for work. do you have sample test cases you can share?

      Regards,
      Mahesh

    • Author gravatar

      Since Katalon is free, a very practical demonstration of what it can would be to create the code needed to fill in forms. That was one of my first tasks as Katalon could fill in a lengthy form in seconds versus the minute or so it would take me. The ability to create user data in a fraction of the time it takes manually is a great start.

      Another useful demo is link validation. For example, to enter text in a search field, confirm the results contain that text, click the link and then validate something on the following page. That process is at the heart of many tests.

      I have posted snippets from a lot of the test cases I’ve been working on. I’m not able to show more as it’s from customer websites and would infringe on their business. However, I have tried to explain the concept and given the core detail of the code.

      For automation, take a set of manual steps you perform over and over again, write the code that emulates that, and show how much faster it can be done through code than manually. That to me is the start of using automation. Write code that performs repeatable steps which in turn saves time. It’s hard to argue with that benefit.

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