Does lack of time mean your web projects contain costly errors?
Are you and your web development team struggling to meet your deadlines? (Most web teams are!)
Is it hard enough to get the work completed on time, never mind check it thoroughly before you send it out of the door? Does this mean work goes out with bugs and issues in it, only to come back to be fixed later?
Do you ever point your customers at a "completed" piece of work for them to check, only for them to give is a cursory look and tell you "it's fine", then come back to you days or weeks later (after sign off) when they finally discover the problems and issues they have with it?
Each time a piece of work comes back into the development team for a fix, this costs your company money. Your developers have to drop what they're doing (usually working on the next paid project) and re-focus on fixing the bug. And nobody likes fixing bugs. This situation gets worse when bugs come in piecemeal... Bug fixes have a major overhead related to checking code out, rebuilding, redeploying etc, which gets repeated over and over if your fixing one bug at a time.
Very often, this extra effort hasn't even been properly budgeted and accounted for... And the work of fixing such issues often takes place "under the radar" too, so you might not know how much effort it's taking, either.
Also, fixing one bug can create two new ones... So dealing with issues can leave you further from finishing than when you started... When will this project ever end?
This makes your team look bad in the eyes of your customers: "... they keep on breaking things." And it makes your customers look bad in the eyes of your team: "... they keep on moaning about our work".
So if:
- Your projects aren't making you the kind of money you expect them to
- Your margins are narrower than you'd hoped.
- You're struggling to pick up repeat business.
... errors in your work are one of the main reasons why.
Testing by hand is a horrible, error-filled job.
When websites get built, the testing phase can often be cruelly-neglected. Developers would much rather be writing code, designers like to design stuff, and the customer (to whom the buck of testing is often passed) is too busy, and anyway - they're paying, so why should they test it?
Also, testing by hand is a dull, laborious process that human beings (no matter how much attention they pay to the details) just aren't very good at.
This tedium is compounded by the fact that, to test a website properly, you need to re-test it every time a change is made to the site, as each change has the potential to break something that was working perfectly before. This means that, to be thorough, you don't just have to test everything once, you need to do it over and over again, every time a bug is fixed.
What would happen if you tested with a computer?
When it comes to websites, what alternatives are there to testing by hand? Surely it needs a human being to be able to open a website, add information to a form, login to a password-protected area and so on?
But what if a computer could be programmed to do all that stuff for you?
- It would be much less likely to make mistakes, so you would catch more errors before the site got released in the first place.
- It would happily test over and over again every time a change was made, meaning "bugs from bug fixes" would stand a much better chance of being caught.
- Your developers would have more time to develop (which is what you hired them to do in the first place).
- Your customers would be happier and thus more likely to use your services again.
What's more, what if the process of setting up the tests was as quick and simple as using the website itself? What if you could define tests by visiting pages in the new site, clicking on links, filling in forms etc? And do all these things once and once only, then have the computer record and repeat all your actions for you?
If you could do all this:
- Setting-up tests would be quicker, meaning you could be more thorough and make sure everything got tested. It might even be fun to do!
- Creating the tests would be simple (and fun) enough for your customer to do without resenting the experience. This would encourage them to actually examine the site more closely and make sure it is working as specified, rather than finding mistakes piecemeal later on.
- You wouldn't need to get bogged-down with creating detailed testing plans: the finished site itself would become the "testing plan".
Trovo's Automated Testing for Web Development makes all this happen.
Trovo's Automated Testing for Web Development is a collection of well used (and loved) Open Source testing and project management tools.
We use it to:
- Record all the features of a website or application that need to be tested.
- Define (at a basic level) what those features need to do.
- Work with you and / or your clients to record the tests for each feature once the feature is ready.
- Add the tests for each feature to the test suite so they can be re-run automatically.
- Schedule the test suite to run at a set interval, or automatically every time a change is made.
- Automate feedback about the tests to a web dashboard and via email.
This means that, once a test has been (quickly and simply) setup using a browser, it will run over and over again automatically, and you'll be alterted if anything breaks. In fact, you'll know about problems with your site before your customers do, which is the way things should be.
This means:
- Sites will go live with far fewer bugs in them.
- Bug fixes won't cause more bugs to be released back to the customer.
- The period just after a big release will run much more smoothly and efficiently.
- Your developers will have more time to focus on the next paid job, rather than spending time fixing the last one again and again.
- Your customer will perceive your team as being proactive and clever, increasing the chance they'll come back again.
If you would like to know more about how Trovo Automated Testing for Web Development can make your development run more smoothly, make your customers happier and make your margins wider, why not call:
0116 232 5147
or email:
We'll talk through your specific issues with you, and arrange a time to meet up and demonstrate Trovo Automated Testing for Web Development to you.
We're here to help make your projects easier and more profitable.