Unit Testing, User Testing, and Design Testing
Several months ago we determined that we wanted to have a fully automated testing platform for Merrcury. We decided that the best approach was to combine unit testing and user testing. Lucho and Henry worked on setting up the platform for unit testing. They just finished. Lucho adapted the unit testing environment of CakePHP so that we could do test-driven development anywhere we wanted. Henry updated the publisher. From now on, every time we publish something, all unit tests will be run. Thank you guys!
For user testing we will use Selenium, which, so far, is looking really good. User testing will be the testing methodology of choice. When something cannot be tested through the user interface, we will then use unit testing. Selenium seems to be a project started by ThoughtWorks, a company that I greatly admire (Martin Fowler works there!). Thank you Martin!
Does it take more time to deploy a system like Merrcury by using unit testing and user testing? Yes, the first stage of coding takes more time. We are betting that the next phases of coding (beta, 1.0, etc.) will be shortened by not having to invest much time doing quality assurance. Only time will tell if we are right.
If you noticed, the title of the blog also mentioned “Design Testing”. This is the only testing that won’t be automated. Design testing will make sure, among other things, that all of the interfaces look good on all major browsers. Maestro will be giving us a hand with it. Thank you Maestro!
Alex
