Matt's Business Process Testing Blog

Does Testing equal Quality?

Have you noticed how the definition of quality has shifted in the QA Industry? 

Over the past 15 years, Mercury has been focusing on ensuring the application that business processes function and perform as expected.   In 1989, when Mercury was founded, the largely understood solution to these quality problems was “more testing.”  This mindset carried on for sometime, as the waves of testing followed technology innovation (ie:  Mainframe to Client Server, Client Server to Web, Web to .NET, etc)

Looking back over the years, the Industry has really evolved in this line of thought.  In today’s world of compliance regulation and substantially more complex software applications, Quality is more of a management paradigm.

Looking at test automation, businesses must have the flexibility to build test-cases off of design documents, early in the life cycle.  Quality Assurance departments must have the capability to report, in real time, the status of the quality of business processes which are being implemented. 

In other words, traditional record/replay tools can not scale to the requirements of modern Quality Assurance.  These previous generation of solutions do not enable test creation early in the software-development-lifecycle and the programatical scripts are “separate and distinct” from design specification.

Looking beyond test automation, this new quality paradigm requires new thinking in terms of test management, quality control, as well as the overall QA planning process. 

On this topic,  there will be some very exciting sessions at Mercury World next week.   

In count-down to Mercury World 2005,   I will have frequent blog entries this week covering the sessions that I am looking forward to, and a couple of interesting technology previews that Mercury will be conducting.

I hope to see you at the show!

- Matt

The Accelerators for Business Process Testing are on fire.

Last week, I had a follow-up conversation to one of our Business Process Testing customers in the West who have completed a successful patch upgrade to his Oracle 11i implementation. This customer had been trying to automate the testing of each-and-every patch cycle for the past two years, but simply could not get the resources and time to build the automated tests.

To quote: "Automation is great. Everyone knows this. Our problem is that the patch cycle was too frequest for us to build automated test cases... we simply did not have enough time. It makes us very nervous, as our business depends on our Oracle systems."

The Business Process Testing accelerators helped change the game for this customer. With the Business Process Testing Accelerator for Oracle 11i, there is no automated test creation from scratch. Instead, an entire suite of completed test cases come pre-packaged in terms of the automated testing components, the data management, and the business process flows.

Since Business Process Testing features auto-documentation, the test-plan documents are auto-generated by the system.

Available with a professional services engagement for the customization of the accelerator, the BPT Accelerator for Oracle dramatically reduces the implementation cost and overhead of test automation. For more information on the Business Process Testing Accelerator for Oracle applications, visit:

http://www.mercury.com/us/solutions/erp-crm/oracle/business-process-testing-accelerator/

 - Matt

The new release of Business Process Testing is making waves in the industry.  Yesterday, I received the following email from a Quality Assurance Manager of a large shipping company.

"We have been looking for a method to convert existing WinRunner scripts into QuickTest Professional assets for the last three months, and have evaluated a couple of tools on the market to do this.  I wanted to let you know that with this new release of Businesss Process Testing, this is NO LONGER AN ISSUE!

Without the expense of purchasing another tool, hiring a consultant, or taking on a massive internal project, we are using Business Process Testing to re-use our existing WinRunner scripts as Business Components.  We have now built a combined test framework of both WinRunner and QuickTest Professional assets, which allows us to test practically every environment from one solution.  It really works great guys."

What great news! 

When we planned the Business Process Testing 8.2.1 release, one of the top objectives were to give our existing WinRunner installed base the ability to re-use ANY existing WinRunner asset (scripts, functions, GUI-Maps) in the new system. 

For more information on using WinRunner assets in Business Process Testing, visit

Business Process Testing for WinRunner Users

- Matt

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