Ekam - Principles

Unified test automation

Any modern-day application would have Mobile apps, APIs, and Web applications. engineering teams need to carefully plan and test across these applications and layers.

It is important not to under do or overdo the test automation. Both have a negative impact on engineering and delivery. The concept of the test pyramid, and having the right tests at the right layers would help in optimising test suites.

A unified test automation framework — is a solution approach having a single repository having tests at various layers of your application covering all your applications, having a unified view of all your tests.

Advantages

1. Assess the test pyramid and optimise test suites — Right tests and right layers
2. Avoids creating and managing multiple test repositories of test code.
3. Leverage common functionalities across all layers of test suites
4. Leverage APIs for test data management

Low-code test automation

In the software industry, there are below approaches to test automation

1. Code-based, custom test automation framework
2. Codeless solutions

Code-based solutions or Custom test automation framework

There are awesome tools built to automate web applications, mobile applications & underneath APIs too. Selenium, Playwright, Appium, RestAssured, Retrofit are some examples that are common. With these tools, custom test automation frameworks could be built

Pros

1. Tests are assets of the team — The entire team including developers and QE contribute and collaborate in test automation activities and leverage these tests for faster feedback. It perfectly suits agile teams.
2. You are in control always — It is code & hence it can be read, refactored, and continuously improved for efficiency and effectiveness.
3. Tests could reside within the dev repository, making it easier to reach and manage test assets. Enabling early feedback to the changes, even before PR is raised
4. Development teams could add their code along with test code in a single commit. This way we could avoid the creation of backlogs & create a safety net from early on
5. The balance of the test pyramid can be managed easily
6. It builds a lot of visibility as the engineering team is fully aware of the state and progress of the test automation

Challenges

1. Getting skilled testers who could code in the QE community is hard
2. For fruitful test automation, you need the same standards as development
3. It all starts good — but struggle begins as complexity increases. Need for authoring & execution speed, scale & sophistication to be built in the evolution process
4. In some cases, engineering teams do not give the same level of attention and importance to test automation and slowly the test automation gets compromised.

Codeless solutions

Pros

1. Easy to learn when compared to coding
2. It suits teams who have limited coding and test automation skills
3. Features that could be consumed out of the box

Challenges

1. Running cost. Keeps burning money constantly
2. It could create a divide in the team if dev engineers are not too keen to learn a new tool and automate
3. You would be limited by what tool offers
4. There is always a risk, that if something goes wrong & the tool is not suiting your needs, then we need to figure out alternatives or start-over again
5. The maturity of the tools as this space is evolving
6. These tools are not battle-tested & hence unsure if they could handle practical complexities

Both approaches burn time & money — Slows down engineering efficiency — Test automation becomes impediment rather than complimenting engineering.

Low-code solutions

Low-code approach takes a middle-ground, where the development approach requires little to moderate coding knowledge. A lot of features are pre-built & can be consumed easily. Uses code generation techniques for rapid development.

Ekam

Ekam is a low-code approach and pragmatically solves the problem of both worlds (custom framework & code-less) saving time and money — building confidence in engineering teams — so that they can speed up with safety.

Ekam helps you develop automated tests swiftly, while it takes care of all technical complexities behind the scene, thus enabling you to go faster.

Start from day 100 and not from day 1 of your test automation journey. Ekam puts you ahead in the game, by means of accelerated and effortless test automation, giving you a leap upfront.