Agile Requirements Designer

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  • 1.  Automate Automation Script Creation for Packaged Apps

    Posted Sep 28, 2017 05:34 PM

    At CA Technologies, we realize our customers already have a toolchain in place to manage and execute their activities throughout the SDLC. That is why we are continuously focused on integrating with the most popular third-party and open-source solutions available. Our goal is to augment and complement an organization’s existing processes to take them to the next level. As such, we are pleased to announce the newest integration between CA Agile Requirements Designer and Ranorex. The blog announcement can be found here.

    Technical Integration

    Continuous Delivery isn’t possible without automation, especially test automation. If test cases and scripts are constantly being designed and rewritten, teams are not realizing their full, agile potential. CA Agile Requirements Designer provides a powerful platform to automatically generate and manage optimized test cases and test automation scripts directly from defined requirements. Ranorex is a powerful UI object recognition and test automation engine built tackle the challenges of manual testing. Together these solutions shift testing left like never before. Instead of designing test case strategies, users can focus on designing rich requirements. Instead of writing automation code, users can scan an application’s objects and actions to generate automation script without typing a single command. When it comes to bug fixes and new versions, both test cases and automation scripts are identified as effected by changes and regenerated. Not only are QA cycles shortened, processes withheld until after code is released to QA are taking place in the design and planning stages allowing for more parallel, in-sprint work streams.

     

    How it works

    Ranorex allows users to automate UI testing for web and mobile applications as well as packaged apps like SAP, Oracle EBS, and the like. Users scan an application’s UI to identify and track objects and build their associated action scripts. The result is automated workflows. This allows customers to automate their regression testing suites while saving manual testing for exploratory testing only. 

    With CA Agile Requirements Designer users are focused on the requirements before the code is written. In using a visual model, teams are aligned with requirements, test cases, expected results, and acceptance criteria. So, by linking Ranorex objects and actions to the nodes in a CA Agile Requirements Designer model we are continuing to reinforce Test Design Automation by eliminating the need to manually build and maintain automation code!

    Architectural Overview

     

     

    This new integration adds a critical piece to a much bigger automation story.

    1. Manage your user stories through CA Agile Central or any other widely used agile application lifecycle management tools.
    2. Import the user story into CA Agile Requirements Designer and model the requirements. The model itself reduces up to half of all defects by eliminating communication gaps found in relying solely on written and spoken word.
    3. Link Ranorex objects along with their actions directly from the repository to the model’s nodes or blocks, all within CA Agile Requirements Designer.
    4. Create additional test assets. CA Agile Requirements Designer can be used to create virtualized endpoints, test data, and the expected results needed for automated testing.
    5. Sync optimized test cases back to the user story. CA Agile Requirements Designer optimizes the paths through the model to give you the fewest number of test cases for the maximum functional coverage.
    6. Import the automation scripts. Based of the linked Ranorex objects and actions CA Agile Requirements Designer compiles the automation scripts necessary to run each test case. These are then imported and run through Ranorex
    7. Sync and analyze the results. Immediately identify where failures occur and pass the results back to CA Agile Central for further review.
    8. Rinse and Repeat - Reuse or update test artifacts when applications change. CA Agile Requirements Designer actively adapts to changes in a requirements model, saving hours, if not days, of manual effort when compared to traditional methods.
    9. Automate it all. With CA Continuous Delivery Director manual handoffs and kickoffs can be orchestrated to run automatically without human interaction.

    Once the code is checked in, CA CDD can:

    Promote the code to the QA environment

    Spin up virtual services

    Provision test data

    Pick up the automation scripts

    Run them through Ranorex

    Pass feedback through to the user story

    Send alerts to the dashboard

    Deploy successes to production

     

    Now that’s Continuous Delivery!!!

     

    Added Value

    CA Agile Requirements Designer gives users the ability to truly “shift left” their QA activities, all the way back to requirements gathering. Testers and developers now have the advantage of knowing exactly what will be tested before coding begins. This strengthens the coding by enabling Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD) adoption, and it accelerates functional testing.

     

    Only occasionally are teams working with net-new applications. In most cases, the application already exists and so does the Ranorex repository containing its tracked objects. All that’s missing is the model to link everything and everyone together and manage testing effectively. Once requirements are modeled, CA Agile Requirements Designer produces the optimal set of test cases, reducing over/under-testing, and maximizes test coverage with the minimum amount of test cases possible. Because CA Agile Requirements designer is active requirements modeling tool, both test cases and automation scripts dynamically adapt to new versions. The result is full-functional automation testing driven by intentional software design – fewer defects, less rework, lower costs, a shorter time to market, and increased quality.

     

    To download a trial of CA Agile Requirements Designer, please visit https://trials.ca.com.

    To download a trial of Ranorex, please visit https://www.ranorex.com/.



  • 2.  Re: Automate Automation Script Creation for Packaged Apps

    Posted Oct 03, 2017 12:29 PM

    Thanks for sharing, sprch02!



  • 3.  Re: Automate Automation Script Creation for Packaged Apps

    Posted Oct 06, 2017 02:12 PM

    Congratulations for the noteworthy work in the perspective of continous integration. But I have a question to ask.

    Does the described interface between CA-ARD-Ranorex exist also between CA-ARD and other automation engine like, for example HP-UFT?. In other words is it possible to associate UFT repository objects and action to the block (nodes) of a CA-ARD flowchart?. If it is possible where do I find some examples about how to implement this?. In CA-ARD wiki I found no examples about the desired integration. 

    Cheers.      



  • 4.  Re: Automate Automation Script Creation for Packaged Apps

    Posted Oct 11, 2017 04:14 PM

    Thank you for the question, gaecar. Currently there is also an integration with eggPlant Functional using keywords at the block automation level to drive their UI automation. There will be an overview video on each of these to come. Specifically, for HP-UFT, code snippets have to be manually maintained in the CA-ARD config file.