Matt's Business Process Testing Blog

Mercury will be hosting a free webinar (ie: web-based seminar) demonstrating all of the new functionality of Business Process Testing 8.2.1. 

Below is the information on the webinar:

Next Generation Test Automation Just Got Better – The New Mercury Business Process Testing

We are very happy to announce the latest release of Mercury Business Process Testing 8.2.1. Please join us for an informative Webinar about this significant new release of Business Process Testing and learn about its latest and greatest features and enhancements.

Topics will include:

·  Business Process Testing 8.2.1 Overview

·  Compatibility With Mercury WinRunner Assets

·  New User Acceptance Testing Functionality

·  New Component Grid View

·  Business Process Testing Ecosystem: SAP, Oracle, and Security testing Accelerators

·  Live Demo

 

Register now at:

http://mercurywebcasts.webex.com/mercurywebcasts/onstage/g.php?d=779691798&t=a

- Matt

This week, Mercury will officially announce the immediate availability of Mercury Business Process Testing 8.2.1.   This is the largest feature release of our new test automation system since its initial inception.

We are very excited about how quickly Business Process Testing has been adopted, with over 150 customers deploying the solution in the first 10 months of availability.  Business Process Testing is now being deployed in a wide range of IT organizations throughout the world.  The results of this new test-automation paradigm have resulted in a quantifiable leap in terms of user productivity, in the amount of tests that are able to be automated,  and in higher quality applications deployed to production.

Mercury’s official press release will cover the top features of this major release of Business Process Testing, but there is so much more to this release that I will explore in this blog entry.   

This following is a summary of the new features of this new release of Mercury Business Process Testing:

Expanded Automation Engine Compatibility

Mercury Business Process Testing 8.2.1 adds Mercury WinRunner 8.2 component support in addition to its Keyword-Driven approach based on QuickTest Professional.  This new support layer adds all of the core Business Process Testing benefits to the pervasive WinRunner installed base.  WinRunner customers can 1)  Start automating their tests well before a stable application is delivered from development, 2) Enable non-technical subject matter experts to design tests without ever touching a script, 3)  Dramatically improve the test maintenance of their WinRunner test beds, and 4) Auto-generate test plan documents.

In addition, WinRunner and QuickTest Professional and be used in combination with Business Process Testing, enabling WinRunner customers to combine new (or existing) WinRunner assets with QuickTest Professional assets.

Introducing Business Process Testing for User Acceptance Testing (UAT)

This new release of Business Process Testing breaks new ground with a new module designed to enable the business users to participate in a closed-loop User Acceptance Testing process.  In Business Process Testing for UAT, Mercury has extended its web based system to envelop the execution of test cases for the User Acceptance Testing phase of quality assurance.   In other words, in the User Acceptance Testing phase, business users can log into the Mercury Quality Center system, and be hand-held through the test execution of complex business processes.  The system also captures any defects or enhancement requests in line with the test execution… and even adds this to the test plan document automatically!    This functionality is new to the Industry and opens new doors to the actual business users in terms of collaboration with IT development.

Second Generation Automated BPT Test Plan Document Creation

One of the most leveraged features of the original release of Mercury Business Process Testing was the Document Generator, a solution that automatically creates natural-language test plan documents from automated test case definitions.  This is heavily leveraged to ensure compliance regulation (such to Sarbanes Oxley, Basil II, etc) are met.  With Business Process Testing 8.2.1, we have dramatically improved this functionality, providing the user with more options to ensure documentation is more concise, all test-data is presented, and you can now generate reports to manage the actual automation effort. 

New Design Specification Features

On of the most significant reasons for Business Process Testing’s rapid adoption is the ability it provides to enable the early creation of test assets…. before the application-under-test is delivered from development.  With Business Process Testing 8.2.1, we have added a more robust “Design Steps” window to enable subject matter experts to better design test steps early in the life cycle.

New Automation Management Functionality

Its all about drag… and drop!  With Business Process Testing 8.2.1, we have enabled the ability to move automated test components (the building blocks of automated tests) between projects by simply dragging.. and dropping.  This provides flexibility to manage concurrent test projects.

Improved Data Management and Importing Capability

Business Process Users have been ability to deploy advanced data-driven test design since the original release.  In Business Process Testing 8.2.1, we now enable better data-import capability for “grouped” test assets.  This allows users to have more options in terms of leveraging external test data-sets.

New Accelerators for Security Testing, SAP

Business Process Testing is really the first automated testing platform… enabling the creation of 3^rd party testing content.  (Mercury calls these packages Accelerators.)  With Business Process Testing 8.2.1,  Mercury partners have released Accelerators for Application Security Testing (available from SPI Dynamics) and SAP Application Testing (available from FocusFrame and Genilogix).

Many more new features…

There are many more new features, including the ability to view and edit automated test definitions through a new Excel-like component ‘Grid”, the ability to search for test component definitions, the ability to execute automated tests as manual, the ability to define more custom fields, improved test execution capability…..  and more.

We are very excited about this new release of Mercury Business Process Testing.  I would like to thank the men and women who have worked over the past 6 months to make this release a reality… with this release of Business Process Testing, we believe we have hit a new level of productivity, ease of use, and flexibility in the automated testing industry.

- Matt

Fannie Mae’s Matt Harding gave a very dynamic presentation on Business Process Testing (to a packed-out audience) and I learned much about how the planning process to test automation remains one of the most critical aspects to success.  

I also had the opportunity to conduct some rough “next-generation test automation” surveys to the crowd and this is what I learned:

-         ~ 65% of folks I spoke with, understood the concept of “Keyword Driven Test Automation”.  (This is much higher than last year.)

-         ~ 80% of the people using traditional “record/replay” test automation solution indicated that the largest challenge was time.  (Time to maintain tests… time to create tests, etc.)

-         ~ 50% the people still deployed some Manual Testing

-         ~95% of the folks are required to manually write some kind of “test plan” document.

Below are some pictures from the event.

- Matt

If you are going to be at the StarEast tradeshow, be sure to catch Matt Harding's session on "Implementing Business Process Testing".

Matt Harding is the Principal Technologist for Testing Strategy at Fannie Mae corporation.  Matt was one of Mercury's Premier Business Process Testing customers, and has been using the technology to enable automated testing for his non-technical subject-matter-experts in an AGILE development environment. 

Matt's organization has been using Business Process Testing for over a dozen implementations.

SESSION DETAILS

IMPLEMENTING MERCURY BUSINESS PROCESS TESTING  

 Matt Harding, Principal Technologist for Fannie Mae

StarEast, May 19th, 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM, Mercury Vendor Speaking Slot, Vendor Exhibition Hall

StarEast 2005: Looking forward to a Great Conference!

It's that time of year - StarEast 2005 is being held this week in Orlando, Florida.

For those who have not heard, the 2005 StarEast Testing Conference is being held in The Rosen Centre Hotel (located in the center of Orlando, Florida) from May 16th - May 20th .     StarEast is one of the largest testing-specific conferences held each year, and this year's conference is boasting the largest amount of track-sessions ever. At this year's event, there will be 6 Keynote sessions, 42 Concurrent Track Speaking sessions, 18 in-depth tutorials, and dozens of vendor exhibitions.    I expect the following Industry tends to be discussed in detail: 
1) Service-Oriented-Architecture (SOA) Testing, 
2) Automated Test Framework Creation, 
3) Model Based Testing, 
4) AGILE Environment testing and
5) Compliance Validation (ie: Sarbanes Oxley)

Mercury Business Process Testing deploys a new, fresh approach to serve as the test-automation solution in all of the above trends.  Specifically, Business Process Testing's unique component-based approach provides for clean SOA validation.  On the framework and Model based testing topics, Business Process Testing architecture delivers a true "Keyword Driven Testing" framework -- and with the additional innovations Mercury built into the product -- it cleanly executes model-based testing validation paths.  In the AGILE development world, Business Process Testing enables you to create test cases that easily map to the storyboard of any Extreme-programming methodology, and Business Process Testing's auto-documentation knocks out a lot of the compliance documentation issues our customers face. I believe this is going to be one of the most exciting StarEast conferences for Mercury customers and myself.     If you are planning to be at the StarEast conference, please be sure to drop by and say hello.   I will be in-and-out of the track sessions and in the Mercury Exhibition booth in the main hall. - Matt