Business Process Testing

July 1, 2019

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Introduction:

Testing can be performed by non-technical experts as well. Business process testing aims the same. It comprises of involvement of business analyst in the automation testing process. It is basically a role- based model that is a collaboration of experts working with analysts and automation test engineers. A business analyst's job is to define and document the processes, components and process tests from a business perspective.

The automation test engineers are entrusted with the responsibility to deliver those business requirements by efficiently amalgamating the requirements with the test scenarios so as to deliver a project's objective aligned with the business objectives. Therefore the focus of the subject is enable the business analysts to describe a scenario for testing as per an objective.

Quality Centre is an automation tool from HP that facilitates software quality assurance activities like requirements management, management of tests, testing business processes for any application. We take HP's Quality Centre automation tool as an example to perform business process testing.

Business Process Testing can be categorised into the following components:

• Component - It is also known as Business component, which is a collection of reusable set of automation statements that is intended to perform a predefined task.
• Application Area - It is a collection of all resources needed to develop business components. It is actually a logical component for preserving various resources to be used, like - shared object repository, function libraries etc.
• Business Process Test - It is a scenario comprising of the sequence of flow of business components.
• Flow - Sometimes there arises a need to use previously used components in other Business Process Tests, in such a case we can create a flow of business components so that there isn't any need to call the components separately.

The reason we have come up with Business Process Tests is that the automation system suffers from few demerits.

• Lack of standards in the automation development process.
• No role for manual testers in automation process.
• Lack of coordination between the subject matter experts and the automation testers.

The idea behind using Business Process Testing is to overcome the obstacles faced in traditional ways of software testing which deprived manual testers from indulging in automated development environment. Thus the process of Business Process testing induces a habit of a conglomeration of ideas and opinions resulting in a constructive outcome of project's requirements.

HP Test Framework for BPT:

HP Business Process Testing is a framework that offers a wide range of reusable test components. It provides a component based testing platform with integrated framework in which one can store reusable components and make changes later.

Modelling the business process makes tests easier to maintain. It is integrated with ALM, Quality Centre and UFT. Business Process Test thus simplifies creation and organization of shareable automated test components.

Implementation of HP Quality Centre:

Let us do a quick analysis of Quality Centre modules:

• Business Component Modules:We can create, manage and automate business components that are reusable.
• Test Plan module:This module lets us drag and place desired components in a logical order which can be tested or debugged to accomplish some objective.
• Test Lab Module:Execute tests and capture results for further review.

Features of HP BPT:

• Enables creation and management of shareable library of reusable functional test components.
• Supports both manual and automation testing.
• Facilitates auto documentation which makes things easy for new testers.
• Creation and updation of tests for SAP and Oracle with the help of extended capabilities.
• Auto publish manual tests from Sprinter and automated test components from UFT.

After having an understanding of HP BPT, let us look into the general pattern for conducting a typical BPT automation process.

Following are the stages of BPT automation process:

• Create the manual components:this involves logging in to the Quality Centre and selecting business component module. Select the various components to be used and save it under a folder that represents our application.
• Automating the manual components:this comprises of creating an application area which is a logical entity, facilitating the grouping of resources required to carry out automated testing. Application are contains - shared object repositories, function libraries, and the necessary settings to automate the components.
• Developing BPT's:both the manual and automated test components are grouped into a test plan module. In this if we wish to add a new component, we may do so by selecting 'new component request' option.
• Debugging the BPT: once the BPT designs are ready, we can run the BPT to ensure the components are in place , that is, arranged in an order and whether it is working properly with the given data inputs.
• Executing BPT:once testing is done thoroughly, one may need to conduct regression, sanity or any other testing required for the BPT's.

Conclusion:

Business Process Testing is an efficient way to build a robust application as we have the minds of the business analysts who are the subject experts and the skill of automation test engineers who have the technical knowledge of automation framework. Together they can share their knowledge, pertaining to their respective domains. A subject expert may put up a new request for a component or may discuss the possibility of any future changes. A subject expert may put up a new request for a component or may discuss the possibility of any future change.