Testing Software with Selenium

Like any Software QA (Quality Assurance) Department, here at Parthenon Software we face the challenge of proving our software will run correctly while also meeting the customer's requirements. A tool that helps us manage the repetitive tasks of software testing is Selenium. Selenium allows us to automate the tasks, run regression tests on websites and to assist in testing new bugs and features.

QA Engineers face the repetitive drudgery of creating new users on a website or performing complex actions over and over again. Selenium allows us to automate these tasks. Selenium's strength lies in its ability to record the user's actions and play them back. These test scripts allow us to automate repetitive tasks as they allow us to ensure an action occurs in the same way every time. Running these test scripts also guarantees accuracy and decreases the time needed to set up our tests.

But these setup tasks are just the start. We need to test out new features as requested by the customer. Or we might need to fix bugs in currently running software. Selenium allows us to automate the test steps for this new code. By having automated tests, we can repeat the testing at will. Features are tested, and bug fixes are verified.

However, these individual tests are not the end point. We gather these tests together, and add them to our library of Regression Tests. By running our tests again, we can verify that new code does not break existing functionality. We also run the tests automatically in our Continuous Integration environment. Any time new code is committed, the tests kick off, and can inform our team, in near-real time, of any changes that cause tests to fail.

Selenium is a very useful tool to the Parthenon Software team. The Software Quality Assurance Engineers make the computers do the recurring tasks. We are freed to do the hard work. We are free to THINK. We can consider our new feature and anticipate places where bugs might be introduced. We are free to consider the entirety of the customer's specification and ensure that we have built quality software that meets those specifications