Quality Assurance with Software Batch Testing

As developers and testers, we are constantly seeking ways to streamline our processes and optimize the efficiency of our testing procedures. That's where batch testing comes into play, a powerful approach that can save both time and resources.

While parallel testing offers a solution to running more tests concurrently, it’s not the only way you can save time while testing. Software batch testing saves time and resources and can easily help you get your product out the door. But it’s not an automatic solution and will still require some heavy lifting to get the most out of it for you and your teams.

Assuring Quality with Software Batch Testing

Software batch testing is a method that runs test cases in groups called batches. Normally, this is done when teams need to run a lot of tests at once — saving them time and resources instead of doing it all manually, one at a time.

Testing is time-consuming, no matter how you look at it. And because it’s so essential, finding ways to make testing more efficient is critical to keep up with modern development speeds. Software batch testing offers an excellent way for QA teams to spot issues early in the development cycle and helps improve quality from the start. It also saves time by running these batches, allowing more tests to be run in the same timeframe.

The Challenges of Software Batch Testing

Software batch testing isn’t as simple as just setting up some batches and watching them fix themselves. There are several factors your team needs to consider when you’re thinking about setting up software batch testing or growing pains they’ll need to adapt to, such as:

• Complexity - Your teams will be testing a lot. Trying to write and collect these tests into batches can be an arduous task on its own. And when you factor in how complex your tests need to be and why they’re being run, it can quickly overwhelm some teams.

• Time and Resource-Intensive - Running a bunch of tests, regardless of how you accomplish it, will eat up your team’s time, especially if you’re planning large test suites or want to cover many changes at once. This is also true for resources too — compute power, people hours, and hardware requirements will all increase in some way when you start batch testing.

• Dependencies - Similar to complexity, when running software batch testing, your teams will need to factor in how tests interact with each other. Larger test suites in your batches may have complex dependencies, making identifying issues more difficult than usual.

• Data Handling - Software batch testing can require a lot of test data to function. Your teams will need to evaluate their existing test suites, see how they’ll interact with your batch tests, and ensure that data is stored and managed appropriately.

• Traceability - With so many tests being run in a batch, it can be difficult to spot what tests align with what results. Your teams will need to create a way to differentiate these tests from one another and ensure they all perform together as expected.

As you can tell, software batch testing requires thorough planning and coordination to execute and benefit from properly. However, none of these challenges is something your team can’t do. By adopting the proper practices and procedures, as well as using the best tools for the job, any team can factor batch testing into their software testing cycle.

How to make your Software Batch Testing Data-Driven

While batch testing can help teams tackle defects, standard approaches to batch testing still face bloated test cycles. Making your software batch testing data-driven allows you to harness your test data to speed up release cycles. 

Launchable helps teams make their software batch testing data-driven with three powerful toolsets: Predictive Test Selection, Test Suite Insights, and personalized Slack Test Notifications.

Smarter, faster software batch testing with Predictive Test Selection

Speed up your software testing while ensuring quality with Predictive Test Selection. Launchable leverages machine learning to predict the test cases with the highest likelihood of failure, using code and test metadata. Enable your development team to focus on the most critical tests, resulting in faster and more reliable software releases.

By making software batch testing data-driven with Launchable, you gain the ability to selectively run a smaller set of tests at different stages of your software development lifecycle, enabling your test runner to determine precisely which tests to execute based on the specific changes being tested.

Software batch test health transparency with Test Suite Insights.

As test suites continue to expand over time, disorder also grows in tandem. This disorder manifests in longer test execution times and a higher incidence of flaky tests. While each individual negative change may be relatively small, their accumulation can have a significant impact on your developers. 

Test Suite Insights empowers your team to assess the impact of changes in your test suites with precision. It allows you to closely monitor test performance, identify and address flaky tests, and track critical KPIs. By arming yourself with this invaluable knowledge, you are equipped to effectively navigate and overcome testing challenges.

Bring everyone up to speed with personalized Test Notifications through Slack.

To effectively advance your PR, it’s essential to stay informed about the running status of test suites specific to your PR and take necessary actions after each run. Unfortunately, this vital information often gets obscured within CI systems, requiring excessive clicks or becoming buried amidst numerous emails.

Keep the threats of context switching and constant alerts for your teams at bay with Slack Test Notifications. Never worry about how your tests are running — Launchable notifies you only when something breaks or when it’s time to merge, without having to play hide and seek with your test notifications.

Final Thoughts on Software Batch Testing

Modern software development is all about speed — and it’s only getting faster. Combining your software batch testing and Launchable turns your complex testing into faster data-driven testing cycles, increasing reliability, accuracy, and scalability.