Test Automation Boot Camp (ICP-ATA)

Part 1: Introducing Test Automation
1. Watch an Automated Test
2. Requirements
• Exercise: Identify different requirement types
• Exercise: Make requirements testable
3. Testing Types
• Black-box vs. white-box
• System testing vs. integration testing vs. unit testing vs. acceptance testing
4. Application Types
• Process-driven or data-driven: no "one size fits all"
• Exercise: Define different kinds of tests for different application types
5. The Alphabet Soup of Tools and Methods
• Selenium. Gherkin. Cucumber. HPQC. Jira—you hear all of these. What do they mean? How do they fit together? Which do you need and which can you safely ignore?
• Exercise: Testing facts and fallacies

Part 2: Preparing for Test Automation
1. Effective Partitioning Schemes
• Exercise: Structure a system into processes (actor goals), activities, actions
2. Use Cases and Test Cases
• Exercise: Create a test case for a single activity from a written use case (happy path)
3. Behavior-Driven Languages
• Exercise: Write a test case as a Gherkin scenario
4. Modeling and Diagramming Techniques
• Exercise: Construct a UI navigation map for normal and alternate flows
5. Equivalence Partitioning and Boundary Value Analysis
• Exercise: Define input value choices and use TAME to construct test alternatives

Part 3: Recording Automated Tests
1. Automated Test Steps:
• Pre-checks, Inputs, Events, and Post-Checks
• Exercise: Write the steps of an automated test
2. Record and playback a single test
• Exercise: Record and play back a test in Selenium WebDriver

Part 4: Dissecting Automated Tests
1. Recorded Test Steps
• Exercise: Examine recorded steps in Selenium
2. UI Element Repositories
• Exercise: Examine the components of a UI page
• Exercise: Create path expressions to locate page elements

Part 5: Assembling Automated Tests from Modules
1. Test Suites, Test Cases, and Modules
• Exercise: Partition a recorded test into reusable modules
2. Modular Test Development
• Exercise: Construct test cases from existing modules
• Exercise: Construct new modules for alternate behaviors

Part 6: Coding Automated Tests
1. Code always, Code sometimes, or Code never
2. The Skills Pyramid
3. Open-source and commercial tools
• Exercise: Compare tools and team capabilities

Part 7: Exploiting Automated Testing
1. Test-driven development: test cases as specifications
2. Data-driven tests
• Exercise: Define data tables for equivalence partitions and boundary value analysis
3. Multi-platform and cross-browser testing
• Exercise: Run test cases on multiple web browsers

Part 8: Enabling Continuous Integration with Test Automation
1. Regression test suites
2. Development events trigger test runs
3. Configure test subsets
• Exercise: Define a minimal "smoke test" and contrast with a full regression suite
4. Report test results
• Exercise: Design a dashboard for quick reporting of test results

Part 9: Course Summary
1. Quiz: Testing facts and fallacies
2. Exercise: Plan your own test automation strategy