Right now, there are many different transformations taking place in the software industry – and quality is at the center of these transformation initiatives. “Delivering on quality drives better business outcomes by accelerating time-to-market and improving the customer’ experience,” explains mabl Product Manager Owen Hendley.
Below is the outline of a quality engineering maturity model. Rather than thinking of this as a prescriptive order of steps, organizations should consider it a general framework:
In 2022, mabl’s product focus has included deepening its functional testing capabilities, building new features that make it easier for organizations to incorporate automated testing in their development processes, and opening up avenues for validating nonfunctional quality. This has helped to bring mabl closer to its ultimate vision of providing the easiest-to-use, most unified solution for all things related to quality engineering.
“APIs, as we know, are critical enablers in digital transformation,” says Owen. “Given that APIs run significantly faster than browser tests, they can also be a faster way to identify defects during development.”
“In mabl, we offer the ability to run API and browser tests side by side with centralized reporting,” says Owen. He points out that getting started with API tests is as easy as importing a collection from Postman. Mabl’s expanded API testing capabilities empower quality teams to integrate API testing into end-to-end tests, triage API issues with contextualized test results, and monitor long-term performance trends for more confident development teams and happier customers.
Mabl further enables testers with Shadow DOM support, which transforms Shadow DOM testing from a time-intensive, high maintenance process into a simple, intuitive exercise with intelligent, low-code record and playback that searches the entire DOM using a combination of specific selectors to locate elements automatically. As the product evolves - or third-party applications are updated - tests incorporating shadow DOM elements are automatically updated with auto-heal, drastically reducing the amount of time needed to manage automated tests. Since mabl can easily jump between apps, tabs, and windows, a single test can validate the same changes in downstream apps for true end-to-end testing. This significantly simplifies automated testing across critical customer journeys, especially those that require Salesforce testing.
Mabl also introduced Intelligent Wait which reduces test failures by incorporating historical application performance into the timing of actions within tests. During each test run, mabl collects timing data for each step and automatically tailors test execution to match the pace of the application. By mitigating the need to insert manual wait steps or other cumbersome configurations, quality engineering teams can improve test reliability and reduce false positives without any extra work, saving them valuable time and effort.
Collectively, these features make it easier for quality engineering teams to improve test coverage and build a culture of quality thanks to low-code test creation. Even as more test cases are added, mabl’s autohealing capabilities ensure that maintenance remains manageable, even at enterprise scale.
One-in-six people worldwide have different access needs, including the approximately 12 million people 40 years and over in the United States who have vision impairment. With this in mind, building applications that are accessible to all is imperative for providing those inclusive and equitable experiences.
To help organizations prioritize accessibility, mabl now offers organizations the ability to embed accessibility tests in their delivery pipeline with low-code accessibility checks. Regular accessibility checks allow quality engineering teams to establish a more holistic understanding of accessibility issues, which is nearly impossible with quarterly or annual audits. Considering that 52% of software organizations are deploying new code on a biweekly basis and 15% are issuing updates on a daily basis, quarterly audits are unlikely to capture the true state of accessibility within any particular application.
“Companies can risk damaging their brand or undermining the trust of their users, or potentially even lawsuits when accessibility issues are resolved reactively in production versus proactively further upstream,” Owen explains. Using mabl, quality teams can help their organization improve accessibility by setting data-driven goals, establishing trends, and reliably reporting on progress. Software development organizations can prioritize accessibility in a way that reflects the needs of customers and avoid damaging their reputation with exclusionary websites.
Mabl is continually focused on empowering quality teams to elevate testing and build cultures of quality that improve development practices and the customer experience. Quality professionals can learn more about mabl and quality engineering in the expanded mabl University, which features comprehensive how-to videos, self-paced certifications, and insights from real-world quality teams. Mabl University is free and available to anyone interested in expanding their software testing and quality engineering skills.
Watch Owen’s mabl Experience 2022 presentation.
Want to find out more about how mabl can help you deliver on quality engineering for your organization? Sign up for mabl’s 14-day free trial to see how intelligent test automation can help.