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, sorting through hundreds of lines of code to find one mistake, and 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 irrelevant tests.
3. Automating everything through the UI
“Alex Ten Wolde, a Salesforce test automation engineer, says, “I often face the pitfall of having to do everything via the UI and automating all scenarios. I’m striving to strike a good balance in deciding which scenarios we need and if we can test them through the back end. We can often set up a test that is much smarter using the power of Provar. You can easily enter the starting situation of a test via API. Then, you perform your actions on the UI and check the back end to ensure 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 the 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 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 leaders leveraging Provar to scale their Salesforce test automation portfolio, our new community forum will provide solutions to software testing pitfalls and how to overcome them. 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!
