I talked to a tester recently who was delighted with what he is now able to accomplish using iTest. But then I discovered that only a few others in that team are using iTest. I asked him and his manager why this might be true. If this guy has been so successful, why isn’t everyone else using iTest, too?
It seems that the answer is that others in the team have assumed that iTest is an automation tool. And they are not automation experts like this guy. So they assume that it isn’t appropriate for them. They are comfortable with their tradition of performing a lot of manual testing and then eventually doing a little scripting of the critical tests.
If you are reading this, chances are that you are an iTest user – and maybe an expert. How many people in your group are also using iTest? If you are successful with iTest, why isn’t everyone using it?
We designed iTest to cover a wide range of skill sets. Users with absolutely no automation experience should be able to use iTest to just speed up the manual testing process. By doing their testing inside iTest rather than outside, these users can take advantage of iTest’s capture to document (and reproduce) bugs. And with a few button clicks, they can get to an automated test that essentially does exactly what they would otherwise have done manually. If they can add a few point-and-click analysis rules to automate success criteria, all the better. Users with a lot of automation experience can use iTest to create highly portable and extensible automated tests -- and do that much faster than they could using conventional scripting. And, further, iTest lets you go where you couldn’t go before using scripting – such as including GUIs in your automated tests.
So if you are pleased with iTest, I caution you against assuming that everyone else on your team will have to have the same level of automation skills that you have to be successful with it. Admittedly, users with no automation expertise might take less advantage of iTest than you might. But, at the same time, isn’t it better that they start using a tool that gets them partially automated? Just think of the time wasted every day by testers who manually provision and re-provision their testbeds over and over again. You would never do that more than once if you understand iTest, would you?
 | Kingston Duffie is the founder and CTO of Fanfare. Learn more about Kingston >> |
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