We know that striving for software quality doesn’t exist without some testing pitfalls. Fortunately, the leaders in our Provar Community have some great tips. There are all common themes, from taking on too much at once to having to sort through hundreds of lines of code to find one mistake to automating everything. Diverse thoughts and contributions from mature testers/developers in the Provar Community inform software quality.
Here are the top 4 testing pitfalls and how to resolve them.
1. Creating tests for metrics that don’t matter
“One of the biggest pitfalls I’ve seen in my career is chasing vanity metrics rather than focusing on quality,” shares Robin Gupta, AVP of Innovation. “When we place vanity metrics over quality, we can fall into the trap of [thinking] it will look cool on a dashboard, rather than the functionality that matters most.”
2. Not having a strategy for test automation
Too often, when the next big solution in testing starts trending, people want to go after it. That’s not a bad thing. The challenge comes when there’s just testing for testing’s sake.
Dimitri Fioole, a Salesforce quality leader, presents a solution. “One just starts automating the existing regression test case by case, and because ‘you can easily run it overnight,’ you will run the entire UI-based regression test suite every night … and end up spending hours every workday debugging.”
Just because we can doesn’t mean that we should. A strategy means having a plan that will save time instead of wasting energy reviewing tests that don’t matter.
3. Automating everything through the UI
“The pitfall that I often encounter is that everything has to be done via the UI and that all scenarios have to be automated,” shares Alex Ten Wolde, a Salesforce test automation engineer. “I’m trying to strike a good balance as to which scenarios are needed and whether we can test it through the back end. Often, a test can be set up much smarter using the power of Provar. The starting situation of a test can easily be entered via API. Then you do your thing on the UI and look in the back to see if all objects are filled in correctly.”
We couldn’t agree more, Alex, and encourage our community to check out our complete documentation. Be sure to subscribe to our latest community-led explainer videos for API testing on YouTube.
4. Not seeking support when you need it
It’s easy to go at it alone when building scalable Salesforce test automation architecture. Fortunately, Provar provides many continuous learning and self-paced opportunities, including University of Provar.
“Every time I had free time, I was self-learning … through the University of Provar, watching videos on Youtube, consistently entering in cases with the support team, and even putting in some work over the weekend,” states Arlin Avery, a software engineering leader in testing. “I love it, and I am still learning new things I can implement in my testing. The biggest thing for me is that it allows me to be very creative in my testing and not as restrictive as other frameworks that didn’t work well with Salesforce when page layouts or page elements would change.”
If you are frustrated because you have succumbed to a testing pitfall, remind yourself that you have a community to support you. It can be helpful to reach out and connect with others via forums, Salesforce User Groups, and network at software testing meetups.
For those leaders leveraging Provar to scale your Salesforce test automation portfolio, you will find the solutions to your software testing pitfalls and how to overcome them in our new community forum. Happy testing from your community fan club at Provar!
To learn more about the Provar Community and to join the forum, join us using the Provar customer email associated with your Customer Success Portal!
