Challenges and lessons learned in test automation: Experiences from telecommunications industry, Test Otomasyonunda Karşilaşilan Zorluklar ve Öǧrenilen Dersler: Telekomünikasyon Sektöründen Deneyimler

Abstract

Producing high quality software is a hard-to-achieve target. Problems arising from software quality continue to be a difficult, complex, and multidimensional problem area that continues to grow in importance for the software industry. Errors in software-based products and services have a direct impact on the company's reputation, financial performance and customer loyalty. Requirement analysis, design or software based errors negatively affect customer satisfaction and can cause the firm to fail complying with regulations and face criminal fines. Some software faults are also responsible for operational performance, scalability, usability, and security issues. Low quality software also creates very significant negative effects on employee motivation, team productivity and time to market speeds. Test automation is one of the solutions used to address such problems. In this study, experiences from the test automation of service, tariff and campaign tests of a web-based application of a portfolio of technology and communication services provider firm is presented. These experiences are discussed in four basic dimensions. The first of these dimensions is used technology and design, the second is the integration to the processes that make up the software life cycle, the third is motivation of both test automation developers and application users working in automation software and tests and the last dimension is change management. © 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.