When to use RPA in testing

This post is my current take on using Robot Process Automation (RPA) tools for automation in testing. RPA tools comes in different shapes, some are better at some things than others. Similarly it has to do with the tool stack of the system under test.

First some definitions/terms.

RPA/RDA definiton: I use the original Horses for Sources definitions: “increase productivity, support human operators in completing tasks and activities” (RDA) and “increase process efficiency, reduce manual labor by automating transaction intensive activities” (RPA). In more practical terms RDA is across the desktop while RPA is more about background processing – a poor man integration between systems.

The class of RPA tools: To me there are at least 4 groups of tools that all claim the RPA label: Test automation (LeapWork, Tricentis), Business Process Optimization (UiPath, BluePrism, Kofax kapow/RPA, Automation Anywhere…), Web only (Testim.io, Cypress.io) and Coding frameworks (Robot Framework, RoboCloud, AppliTools).

System under Test: There is more to a system under test than a web page with backends or an app for a smart phone. Explore the notion of System under Test. You might not have access to the source code – as the test pyramid assumes.

The enterprise challenge: Large businesses and organizations unfortunately struggle, as their IT stack is much more that web only. They want the benefits of continuous testing to their whole technology stack. Existing automation best practices doesn’t seem to address testing on top of IT systems that are older than SAFe, agile and Test-Driven Development.

Automation in Testing: See the AiT definition and namespace: “using automation to support their testing outside of automated checks“. Use tools and automation to handle all the tedious tasks of your active testing activity. Use automated checks to cover the binary requirement confirmations.

When to use RPA tools

Putting RPA tools in play in test automation do enable digital transformation and acceleration of the test activities. There are many parameters to evaluate when to use RPA tools in a testing context:

Simple flow chat for deciding to use RPA tools

Hence, the sweet spot for using RPA tools is a as an execution muscle for mainframe solutions, commercial standard applications and legacy systems with inactive or unavailable codebases. The test management system is still key in providing an overview over all testing activities across CI/CD pipelines, RPA and tests based on human evaluation.

If your system under test is web only, you can follow the modern testing principles and build in Observability in (https://charity.wtf/) and a lot of the things in the code. Plenty of best practices around ci/cd for web systems. Obviously it depends on how well the knowledge about the system is codified – but you can work on that within your org/team too. It’s more tricky of the source code of your web SUT is not available to you and render new locators every time you deploy or refresh. … for that consider to move up the stack and use Cypress or Testim.

Remember – there are no silver bullets.