Test Engineering

Mission:

The Test Engineering (TE) Department is responsible for ensuring that software is developed in accordance with user requirements and conforms to recognized standards.  

Our mission is accomplished by

• Promoting Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) in order to develop quality software in an agile environment.
• Promoting best practices for automated and manual testing
• Working with the user community to test issues with existing systems
• Working with third-party vendors to ensure product compliance to specifications

Automated Testing

Automated Testing is fundamental to the BDD process.  TE tests are run by both the development pipelines, as code is developed, and on regularly-scheduled intervals, to test for regression on existing code

• Development Testing: In collaboration with the development teams, we define and build tests to ensure correct system behavior. These tests are executed as part of the CI process.
• Pre-Production Regression Testing: When a new release of a system is produced, we run our automated test suite against it to ensure existing functionality has not been broken by new code.

Manual Testing

For new functionality we may test manually.  Manual testing is often required due to limitations of tools or the system under test. A tester will create a Test Matrix similar to these, using a process similar to this one. The matrix is then reviewed with the person who initiated the Test Request to ensure that the test coverage is correctly scoped. A link to the test matrix is placed into the Jira Test Request so that the person who initiated the Test Request may follow the progress of the tests. In addition, the Jira task will be updated with questions and comments from the tester as the system is tested.  

Technology

Automated tests are written in Java using the TE testing framework. They are run on the TE Test Grid. The Grid allows us to test across multiple operating systems and browsers all at the same time. Reports are produced at the end of each run detailing the tests run and the success or failure of each test (example). Source for all tests are in the TE Git repo.