Best Practices for Managing Reusable Flows

Reusable flows are a popular mabl feature for scaling testing and sharing knowledge across the entire testing team. These shareable test step bundles make it easy to streamline test creation through mabl’s low-code user interface, even for complex tests. Use cases vary across quality teams, but the goal is the same: stronger, more collaborative automated testing strategies. 

Establishing a Common Ground for Quality Engineering

Some quality engineering teams that collaborate closely with developers rely on reusable flows to create a series of end-to-end tests that run in the background using CLI and the local runner every time developers hit “control + s,” enabling seamless shift-left testing. Other quality teams use flows to democratize automated testing across manual testers: complex flows can be saved and used by everyone engaged in testing, making it easy to scale a variety of test types. 

Regardless of an organization’s quality goals, there are several best practices that make it easy to scale reusable flows. 

Use Naming Conventions 

Instituting a clear set of naming conventions is a straightforward, yet highly impactful way to make reusable flows easier to use across the software development organization. When flow names are consistent, new and established software testers can quickly find relevant flows, reducing the risk of duplicative work. 

An example of a naming convention: <app name/abbreviation> - <module/functionality> - <description>

Following the above example, our mabl tests might have: app - filters - clear filters

• app - configuration - add credentials
• sb - example login - fill in example login with provided credentials (“sb” meaning “Sandbox” aka “mabl Sandbox”)

Deciding on a long-term naming convention is an opportunity for the empathetic development approach that quality engineers lead within the organization. Consider how someone entirely new to the quality team, or even automated software testing, would use reusable flow names to identify the test steps they need. When names are useful to newcomers, they’re an effective tool for scaling testing and knowledge sharing. 

Scale Complex Test Steps with Technical Flows

Friend of mabl Wurl and many other quality teams have a mix of manual testers and automation engineers engaged in testing with mabl. While mabl’s low-code interface reduces the divide between these different types of quality professionals, teams can further unify quality engineering practices with reusable flows. If a developer, SDET, or QA engineer creates test steps with an XPath/CSS selector  or JS snippet to accommodate a specific part of the customer journey, one of the easiest ways to scale that type of test is saving it into a reusable flow. The flow captures the technical steps within an easy-to-use package that allows a greater range of testing contributors to test user journeys with that particular action. With more quality team members empowered to test a broader range of customer journeys, software organizations can improve test coverage and customer satisfaction. 

Communicate When New Reusable Flows are Created

Software testers and quality engineers are busy people. They’re working to expand test coverage, support DevOps adoption, and improve the customer experience. So it’s understandable that everyone on the team doesn’t realize when a new reusable flow is introduced. Simply sharing new flows as they’re created simplifies the discovery process and creates awareness for building a culture of quality. 

Sharing new flows to a dedicated quality Slack or Microsoft Teams channels helps create a record of existing flows, alerts team members, and reduces the chance of duplicated work. 

Test Reviews Encourage Consistency and Collaboration

Establishing feedback and peer review processes for new flows creates opportunities for education and collaboration. This gives quality engineering teams a chance to share knowledge as testing strategies evolve, communicate new best practices, and ensure every flow meets naming conventions. 

Some teams, including mabl, take the peer review process a step further by using the Activity Feed to do a weekly review of new tests and flows. Creating a positive, collaborative culture that encourages learning from discovered bugs and broken tests enables continuous improvement and teamwork. 

Scaling a Culture of Quality with Intelligent Test Automation

Reusable flows are one of the many ways mabl is designed to help software testing teams create and scale a quality engineering process that supports DevOps adoption and a better customer experience. When processes are designed to maximize automated testing solutions as well as team skills, everyone is empowered to contribute to quality. Building processes for sharing knowledge with reusable flows helps everyone execute complex tests quickly and easily. 

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