Software test automation practices in agile development environment: an industry experience report

Abstract

The increased importance of Test Automation in software engineering is very evident considering the number of companies investing in automated testing tools nowadays, with the main aim of preventing defects during the development process. Test Automation is considered an essential activity for agile methodologies being the key to speed up the quality assurance process. This paper presents empirical observations and the challenges of a test team new to agile practices and Test Automation using open source testing tools integrated in software projects that use the Scrum methodology. The results obtained showed some important issues to be discussed and the Test Automation practices collected based on the experiences and lessons learned.