The project, shortlisted for the "Best Use of Technology in a Project", reduced the time needed to create and run automated tests from weeks to minutes.
Bray, Co. Wicklow, Ireland, January 24, 2022 - Curiosity Software, specialists in automated test generation, and EVERFI, a leading social impact education innovator, today published their finalist entry to the North American Software Testing Awards. The write-up sets out how EVERFI use model-based testing to generate functional and visual tests within minutes of a new course check-in, rigorously testing EVERFI's award-winning eLearning platform.
Like most organisations today, Quality Engineering at EVERFI must test a vast array of user journeys faster than ever, while delivering a seamless experience to diverse users and devices.
EVERFI therefore embarked on a Digital Transformation project to reduce the reliance on manual testing in course development. The wholly-manual approach was too time-consuming to test the pathways through EVERFI's platform, while outsourcing manual testing was proving too costly.
The project implemented best-of-breed functional test automation and visual testing, using Cypress and Applitools to test rigorously across devices and resolutions. To ensure the speed and rigour of test creation, EVERFI leverage model-based test generation from Quality Modeller, creating optimised tests to cover every course permutation. This fully automated approach uses schemas produced by EVERFI's in-house development platform, which are parsed by another in-house tool to generate flowcharts and tests within minutes of a course check-in.
EVERFI's 9 month journey
In just 9 months, this approach reduced the time required to create and execute tests from weeks to minutes, while automating 85% of course testing. The automated testing further helps deliver quality, with 100% permutation coverage and visual testing of 52 courses.
EVERFI's Vice President of Quality Engineering, Greg Sypolt, and Director of Quality Engineering, Sneha Viswalingam, comment that:
"As we set out to scale test automation across the enterprise, we knew we needed to match the speed of course development. Quality Modeller's flowcharts break our system down into reusable chunks that generate the functional and visual tests we need. We can further assemble these reusable building blocks automatically as new courses are checked in, generating rigorous tests alongside a collaborative picture of what's being tested."
James Walker, Curiosity's Chief Technology Officer and a collaborator on the project, describes how:
"What EVERFI achieved in 9 months is truly ground-breaking. EVERFI's Quality Engineering team have implemented an intelligent approach that combines readily-available technologies with technical artifacts produced by development teams. This doesn't just trigger the right tests based on code changes; it generates new tests within minutes of a check-in."
