Parallel Testing vs Traditional Testing: an Overview
Rising demands for quality products and the overall digitalization of many of the operations within a business have meant an increased reliance in organizations on software. Business processes have themselves become quite a software heavy.
Testing has already been a crucial step in the software development life cycle across the world, and with the introduction of complex software for streamlining business processes, the need for superior testing is obvious! The testing technologies being deployed need to ensure that the software is functioning in the intended manner. The right testing framework hence becomes crucial for ensuring the proper flow of business processes.
Incorporating new and innovative ways of software development is a given these days, to keep up with the speeds with which technologies are changing. Even as you are reading this article, chances are happening in the software industry! With the fierce competition, efficiency both in terms of speed and quality is the backbone of the success of organizations.
In such a scenario, traditional testing that involves a sequential or a one-step-at-a-time kind of approach can hurt the company’s prospects for success by increasing the time-to-market of their products. Testing needs to keep up with the changing market demands and trends and hence, needs to be fast.
Parallel testing, as the name suggests, involves testing that is undertaken simultaneously leading to better use of resources and greater speeds, since the test execution time is considerably reduced. It makes use of virtual machines and a testing server that is cloud-based.
Let us understand the parallel testing framework in relation to the traditional testing methodology.
The traditional waterfall approach to software development involves the completion of one step before proceeding to the next. Under the waterfall model, the sequential framework is typically utilized for testing purposes. Traditionally, such testing has been in manual mode.
What this means is going through long cycles of product development, testing, providing feedback, applying fixes to the software, re-testing and this cycle goes on. This is loop is carried out multiple times before the product can be released. You can imagine how long a process this is!
In addition to the time that goes into the following testing in a sequential manner, this methodology requires a greater investment of resources, and even after that, it tends to be more prone to errors. It doesn’t quite make sense for companies to go through all this trouble, and have longer delivery cycles without having the assurance of better quality. Besides, such a methodology is not scalable at all.
This is where Parallel testing proves to be a boon for organizations! Intuitively we understand what parallel testing is, but what does it really entail. Parallel testing is a testing framework in which several test cases run parallelly for multiple combinations of browsers and operating systems. It drastically reduces the cost and time that needs to be devoted to testing.
Since it also involves automation, the scope for errors is radically reduced. It relies on virtual machines, and hence, human errors can be nullified. Cases, where there is repetitive testing, should necessarily be taken over by the parallel testing framework since the human error aspect is higher when tasks are repetitive and boring.
An example would make things clearer. Let’s look at a manual tester assigned the task of undertaking functional testing of one feature of an app for various versions of an operating system, say, Windows. So, the manual tester will have to conduct the said test for Windows 7, 8, 9, and 10 and the versions therein.
He will have to do one test, followed by the second, then the third, and so on. This is the very same test but conducted on different OS versions. You can conjure up the image of how tedious this exercise would be. Time-consuming and highly susceptible to errors!
Enter the parallel testing setup. You have one test script; you have virtual machines that simulate the different versions of the operating system, and you can run the test for all these test cases in one swift go!
Parallel testing, thus, leverages the cloud and virtual machines to conduct testing at speeds that the traditional testing framework cannot lend itself to. To sum up, parallel testing is time and cost-efficient along with less prone to errors.
Let’s explore in detail some of the benefits of the parallel testing framework:
Increased speed of testing
- As we have already noted above, enhanced speed of testing is the most important advantage of parallel testing over the traditional methodologies. In the time that sequential testing would take to run one test, parallel testing will be able to complete testing a multitude of tests. If there are 5 browsers to be tested, the same test script can be used to run these tests, cutting down the execution time by 5 times.
The time that the QA teams save through parallel testing can be utilized to undertake exploratory testing, a luxury that sequential testing is not able to offer.
Improved test coverage
Since parallel testing allows for testing a host of testing scenarios, that too at the same time, you get a much higher test coverage when compared to the traditional testing methods. You don’t need to pick and choose the most popular browser-operating system combinations, as is the case in sequential testing. With the use of virtual devices, various permutations and combinations can be under brought parallel testing.
Faster release cycles
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- The reason automation is introduced in the testing environment is to ensure that the release cycles of the final product meet the demands of the market at the right pace so as to exploit the opportunities to the fullest. Parallel testing helps to achieve this goal.
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- Testing environment issues handled: One of the important elements of testing is the building, maintenance, and updating of the testing environment. Apart from being a costly affair, it can prove to be a hassle to keep up with the proper maintenance. With parallel testing, this aspect of testing is no longer a cause of worry. You can lease the testing infrastructure as required. Since the test environment is cloud-based, you can be assured that it will properly be updated.
This also becomes a much more cost-efficient route since the cost per test is significantly reduced. CI/CD processes optimized: With the parallel framework, testing can be done during the initial stages of the software development life cycle. This helps in the early detection of issues, and faster fixing of bugs throughout the SDLC hence contributing to the optimization of the CI/CD processes.
Data-backed decision-making
Since there are several tests running in one go, parallel testing generates a large reservoir of strong data, based on the results of these tests. The decision-making process becomes strengthened when based on this large pool of test results. Hence the improvement of processes is much more robust with parallel testing.
Flexibility
Transitioning from traditional to parallel testing methodology does not mean that you can’t follow traditional testing for certain elements of the process! There are instances when you would have to use sequential testing. The parallel testing framework lends ample flexibility to revert to traditional testing methodologies as and when needed. It only adds further value to the existing testing regime.
Adaptability
Emanating from the flexibility aspect of parallel testing, another advantage that can be observed is the ease of adapting to parallel testing. Organizations can pace themselves and plan their transition from traditional testing methods to parallel testing methodology. It can be a step-by-step shift rather than being a drastic one. Team members can be gradually introduced to and trained in parallel testing methods.
Judicious utilization of efforts
When conducting tests in a parallel fashion, the test scripts can easily be re-utilized for multiple test cases and device-OS combinations, hence negating the need for putting efforts into creating new test scripts for each test scenario, as is the case for sequential testing.
Improved communication between teams
Since testing is faster and can be done at various points in the development cycle, right from the beginning of the cycle, information can be relayed to the developers about improvements and remedies earlier rather than later. This can help them integrate the updates without waiting till the end of the software development cycle. Hence there is better reporting and a smoother flow of communication between QA teams and the developers, contributing to an enhanced working dynamic for the teams.
Parallel testing contributes to augmented delivery cycles alongside enhanced assurance of quality. In addition to being a cost-effective option, it also gets rid of the hassles that come with setting up the testing environment for all the tests.
While this may sound like a win-win choice for all your testing needs, there are some factors that organizations need to be aware of before introducing parallel testing strategies into their QA processes.
Proper test data management, using a data-driven testing approach to avoid hard-coding, and utilizing a cloud-based test environment rather than maintaining a home-grown test infrastructure, are some of the things to be kept in mind while deploying parallel testing.
In conclusion, all the benefits of implementing parallel testing in the QA process, as noted above, are ultimately going to create products of superior quality which will reach the market much faster, leading to higher sales and increased profits for the company!