Automated Testing for LUXVT’s Agent Tour Creation Feature
Introduction
LUXVT is a pioneering digital marketing enablement platform catering to the luxury real estate agents in the USA and Canada.
Project scope
The project involved automating the testing of LUXVT's tour creation feature. This feature allows real estate agents to create customized, multimedia-rich tours for luxury properties. The aim of the automation was to reduce the effort on the part of the testers in the platform engineering team required for regression testing and enhance the overall efficiency and quality of the platform.
Use case and problem statement description
LUXVT's platform required extensive regression testing for each update to ensure the tour creation feature functioned correctly. The manual regression testing process was time-consuming, costly, and prone to delays, slowing down the development cycle. This inefficiency hindered the team's ability to quickly release new features and updates. The goal was to automate testing to reduce the effort, cost, and delays associated with manual regression testing, enabling faster and more reliable development cycles for the team.
Challenges
- Manual Test Execution: Testers were heavily reliant on manual execution of test cases, which was time-consuming and prone to human error.
- Regression Testing Bottlenecks: Each regression cycle was lengthy, requiring significant effort to run the tests and verify results across multiple versions.
- Limited Test Coverage: Due to the time constraints, only the most critical paths could be tested frequently.
- Delayed Defect Detection: Defects were often detected later in the development cycle, making it harder and more costly to resolve them.
Our Approach
Process Overview
Our team followed a structured approach to deliver the project:
- Requirements gathering and analysis
- Design and development of automation testing framework using Selenium Java.
- Implementation of the data-driven testing framework (using test data including valid, invalid, and boundary values to validate different scenarios, such as login credentials and form inputs, with the sample data ) using TestNG, POM, Parameterization using Excel and Maven.
- Test case creation and execution.
- Defect reporting and tracking.
- Continuous integration and testing.
- Final code push to Git repository for Client handover.
Result
Before Implementing the Automated Testing Solution:
- Manual Regression Test Life Cycles:. Testers had to run each test manually, resulting in slower testing cycles and delays in identifying and fixing issues. For instance, executing 15 test cases for the LUXVT tour creation module took approximately 1 hour.
- Limited Test Coverage and Accuracy: Due to the constraints of manual testing, only the most critical paths could be covered frequently, leaving other scenarios such as corner cases and boundary conditions insufficiently tested. This increased the risk of human error, leading to inconsistent and less reliable results .Only a limited number of dependent workflow and related modules could be verified. Eg: Property search module, Currency conversion module, Translation module etc.
After Implementing the Automated Testing Solution:
- Reduced Regression Test Life Cycles: Automation reduced the time spent on regression testing. Approximately 93% of the test cases were automated for the module, thus reducing the duration of Regression Tests by around 75%. This allowed for a quicker Turnaround time.
- Increased Test Coverage and Efficiency: Automated tests ran large sets of test cases simultaneously, minimizing the manual effort and speeding up the testing process. This allowed for validating more dependent workflows and related modules .Eg: Property search module, Currency conversion module, Translation module etc.
- Faster Defect Detection and Resolution: Automated tests were executed with every deployment, enabling earlier defect detection. This allowed the development team to identify and fix issues quickly, leading to faster development cycles.
Overall Project Outcome
The automation of testing for LUXVT's tour creation feature resulted in a significantly more efficient and reliable testing process. Key benefits include:
- Increased Productivity: By reducing manual testing time and providing faster feedback loops.
- Enhanced Quality: Automation increased test coverage, including corner cases and boundary conditions, while reducing human error for more reliable results.
Success metrics
- Usability: The testing automation solution significantly improved usability for the platform.
- Percentage of Test Cases Automated: Approximately 93% of test cases were automated, significantly reducing the time required for manual regression testing and improving overall testing efficiency.
Lessons learned
- Test Automation is Crucial for Scaling Operations: Automating testing allows for more reliable results with less manual intervention, making it easier to scale the platform and handle increased workloads.
Conclusion
Recap of project achievements:
Through the successful automation of testing for LUXVT's tour creation feature, we reduced the time and resources spent on manual testing, enhanced test coverage, and improved the overall quality of the platform.
Benefits to the client:
LUXVT now benefits from a more efficient and reliable testing process, which allows the platform to undergo thorough testing in less time. The automation solution led to several key improvements:
- Reduced Regression Life Cycles: Automation cut down the time spent on regression testing, enabling faster verification of updates and ensuring stability with every new release.
- Reduced Manual Testing Time: By automating repetitive testing tasks, the manual testing burden was significantly reduced.
- Faster Defect Detection and Resolution: The automated framework allowed defects to be identified and addressed faster, reducing the time between discovering issues and implementing fixes.
