We recently announced that the Unified Runner is generally available. This next generation of mabl offers a variety of benefits to quality engineering teams: 25% faster test runs on average, greater consistency between tests run locally and in the cloud, and the introduction of Intelligent Wait. These enhanced capabilities are designed to further help QA teams lead the transition to DevOps, continuous testing, and quality engineering through a unified test automation platform.
Friend of mabl SmugMug started using the Unified Runner as part of mabl’s early access program, an opportunity for customers to give feedback to our team on new features while still in development. Under the leadership of Senior Engineering Manager, QA Janet Bracewell, alongside Senior Test Engineer Chris Skopec, Senior Test Engineer Dan Laabs, and QE consultant Jonathan Kuehling, the SmugMug team has created a culture of quality where everyone shares responsibility for software testing. The enhanced capabilities of the Unified Runner have enabled their team to further unify their testing strategy across environments and empower everyone to contribute to quality.
Building Quality Experiences for SmugMug’s Diverse Audience
SmugMug is a leading global photography platform, helping photographers of all kinds protect, share, and sell their photos. Their users range from casual smartphone shutterbugs to professional portrait, wedding, and landscape artists, all of whom value different experiences on SmugMug’s platform. Building high-quality user journeys for every customer is the cornerstone of Janet and her team’s mission.
Greater Reliability Enables Greater Experiences
SmugMug’s photography platform is highly dynamic due to its variety of user experiences. Customers range from hobbyist photographers sharing their work with friends and family, while many professionals have built fully virtual galleries and need payment processing, sales histories, and advanced account management features. To meet the needs of every user of SmugMug’s products, the QA team runs a variety of local and cloud-based tests. This includes comprehensive end-to-end testing, regression testing, and API testing. Further complicating execution is that tests are performed in several different environments: a developer’s sandbox, an integrated development environment, and the production environment.
The Unified Runner brings a new level of consistency whether they’re running tests in the cloud or in a local environment, making it possible for Janet and her team to build an even stronger culture of quality. Since the Unified Runner became available, engineers and software testers alike have been able to take advantage of the improved reliability and faster test execution while still creating tests in minutes. As a result, developers are embracing building tests as they code, making it easier to manage quality across the development pipeline.
“The Unified Runner with Intelligent Wait has allowed our team to focus on improving our product and the user experience, rather than managing tests. The faster, more consistent execution across local runs, cloud runs, and CI/CD headless pipeline runs has been instrumental in showing the value of testing across the development organization.”
When software testing supports better development practices, everyone from the engineer to the customer benefits. The Unified Runner makes it even easier to harness the power of fast, consistent tests that enable high quality user experiences without sacrificing product velocity. For SmugMug, that means empowering their global community of photographers to protect, share, and sell their photos.
The Unified Runner is now available to all mabl customers, as well as for those enrolled in our 14 day free trial.
