How to Automate a Long-standing Website?

November 15 07:41 2016 by Nataliia Vasylyna Print This Article

Sometimes a tester faces such task as to perform the automation tests of the website which was released many years ago and now requires some new features development.

Before the developers start writing code lines, regression testing should be fulfilled. Thus, the product manager may ask to provide the automated regression testing package. This test process should be well-organized and thorough.

Undoubtedly, if a website has been operating for a long period of time, it mostly contains small errors and there is no need to mindlessly write tests in huge numbers. But what matters is to select and focus on the crucial scenarios and design the functional automation package in order to successfully conduct software testing.

What Stages Should a Tester Pass?

Examination of the system. A tester should realize functional capabilities, structure, and peculiarities of the website. A mind map technique may assist this process.
Collect the usage metrics. Special web analytic services (e.g., Google Analytics) may significantly help to receive all necessary information about the visitors’ activity in order to gauge what scenarios to automate.
Automate the domain end-to-end scenarios. The goal – to ensure that all these scenarios are not broken and operate correctly by performing smoke testing.
Enhance the feature coverage. State transition testing and mind mapping are the best way to perform this step. It is intended to create more comprehensive regression pack.

Thereafter, in order to not simply execute a standard website testing, one should use a certain plan of action.