SPARTA – SPAtial Representation of Tests for Automation

SPARTA - SPAtial Representation of Tests for Automation

Abstract:

Traditional Test management solutions require engineers to document the test cases in verbose manner. As more and more companies tend to adopt Agile style of product delivery, engineers do not have adequate time to document the test cases in the format that the traditional test management tools require. Disclosed is a method for faster creation & maintenance of test intelligence which can be directly consumed by any automation tool. SPARTA achieves this by the usage of Mind Maps and associate Keywords. A Keyword is representative of a task performed on the product under test.

Detailed Description:

Traditionally in Waterfall model of Software development, engineers had dedicated time to document test cases using one of the popular test management software.

With more and more companies moving away from Waterfall model and embracing Agile model, the dynamics of a product release has changed drastically. Agile projects are characterized by

Shorter release cycles

Fast growing feature sets - thereby the regression load Dynamic changing requirements

All these result in shorter time available for QA teams to:

Test new features

Regression testing for older features Catch up on Automation & documentation.

We realized that the traditional QA approach & the existing toolsets (Commercial / Open-source) do not allow creation/maintenance of test documentation and automation within shorter cycles, without having to scale linearly on resourcing.

SPARTA was designed to address the aforementioned pain points by allowing,

Faster creation & maintenance of test intelligence (Visual representation of test logic/flows) Easier enumeration and management of test data

Consumption of the tests (Visual representation) directly for automation

In traditional QA approach, we would have separate representations of the test, one for manual testing and one for automation. The primary goal of SPARTA is to have one representation for both Manual and Automated tests.