Best Practices for Migrating Automated Tests into Mabl

Change management is an ongoing battle in software development, especially for quality assurance teams. If software testing is slowed down as the testing team learns a new test automation solution, it’s likely that product velocity as a whole is impacted. But if testing (and testing tools) don’t adapt to agile practices and the complex web of integrations, and third-party applications that play a growing role in software development, it increases the likelihood of bugs slipping into production. The result: QA teams are stuck in a classic Catch-22. 

Migrating automated tests between test automation platforms can smooth the transition between flaky, outdated testing tools and intelligent test automation. But even this process requires careful planning in order to minimize disruption to quality operations. Fortunately, there are ways to ease the pain of migrating tests into mabl. 

Minimal Software Testing Disruptions, Maximum Quality Engineering Impact

Migrating existing automated tests into mabl can be a useful way to streamline the transition process between test automation platforms. Tests can be imported from a range of automated testing tools, including Selenium, Protractor, and Postman. To make full use of this feature, quality teams should have a plan in place to maintain a consistent quality strategy during the transition.

Audit Existing Automated Tests

Some quality teams may lack insight into their current automated testing strategy, depending on how hard it was to create and maintain tests. If the organization relied primarily on manual testing, automated tests may be outdated, flaky, or broken. Or worse, the team may not even understand what the tests are supposed to do, especially if the QA engineers that originally set up the previous test automation framework have since changed roles. A thorough audit of any and all automated tests is essential to start migrating existing tests into mabl. 

QA teams should look to understand: 

• The purpose of each test
• If the test still works
• How easy the test is to maintain

With a basic understanding of their current automated testing strategy, quality teams can begin migrating into mabl.

Work Backwards to Move Forward

Most software testing teams start the migration process by selecting their most-relied on tests to move first. While this might seem like the most logical approach, it often backs QA teams into a corner running a core set of tests smoothly in both test automation frameworks, with the same set of difficult tests still posing issues. 

The key to overcoming this challenge is leaving the working automated tests until the final stages of moving into mabl. By deprecating broken, high maintenance, and flaky tests in the previous test automation tool, QA can focus on building out new testing capabilities in mabl’s simple, low-code UI that autoheals tests as their product changes. This allows software development organizations to maintain a thorough test automation strategy while they move their tests into mabl. As the software development organization becomes more comfortable with mabl, they can migrate their most reliable tests as a final step in implementing intelligent test automation. 

Experiment with mabl’s Intelligent Test Automation Solution

Depending on their previous test automation tool, many QA teams may have a fragmented or limited automated testing strategy. Migrating or rebuilding existing automated tests into mabl is only part of the full implementation process. With low-code simplifying the test creation process, QA teams can expand their testing strategy to include API testing, cross browser testing, or email testing, depending on the needs of their product. Though migrating existing tests can be a huge help in transitioning between test automation platforms, building an integrated automated testing strategy that uses all of mabl’s capabilities is critical for adopting quality engineering, improving customer satisfaction, and accelerating product velocity. 

See how easy it is to import your automated tests into mabl's intelligent test automation platform with our 2 week free trial!