Business Process Testing (BPT) – How to Simplify and Speed Up the Testing Process Using BPT

In today’s generation of automation testing, Business Process Testing (BPT) has changed the current testing industry standards.

Business process validation is the act of verifying end-to-end business process. It is performed step-by-step to confirm that all business rules are working correctly and when any deviation is found the defects are logged.

This tutorial will give you a complete idea on BPT – How it works, what it includes, its significance, etc. 

What is Business Process Testing?

#1. BPT is a manual as well as automated testing solution for test design, creation, and execution. It helps reduce testing timelines.

#2. BPT approach includes:

• Reusable business components
• Business process tests

#3. BPT is a role-based model that allows business analyst and non-technical Subject Matter Experts (SME) to work with business components in a script free environment and create business process tests.

BC1: First Business Component that opens browser and enters login credentials
BC2: Second Business Component that navigates to accounts screen and searches for account
BC3: Third Business Component that verifies field values

#4. The key concepts involved in BPT are as follows:

• Business Process: Business Process can be defined as the collection of related activities that are performed to achieve a predefined goal.
• Business Components: Business components are considered as set of small and reusable pieces of test cases
• Business Process Tests: Business Process Tests are test cases that include business components.
• Application Area: It is the logical entity and a repository that contains testing resources such as shared object repository, function library etc.

#5. BPT helps you maintain a project with several test environments and tools such as UFT, Micro Focus ALM etc.

How does BPT work?

1. BPT allows Subject Matter Experts to create tests
2. It is combined with Quality Center via a license
3. To work with BPT from QuickTest professional (QTP) it is necessary to connect Quality Center with BPT support
4. Subject Matter Experts define the business process document, business components, and business process tests
5. Automation Engineers, on the other hand, play and record the individual steps of business components
6. QA Testers run and debug the individual components

BPT Roles:

The major user’s roles involved in BPT are the following:

Role #1) Subject Matter Expert (SME): Subject Matter Expert is a person who is considered an authority in a particular area. There are two types of SMEs-

• Business Component Expert has a detailed understanding of individual element
• Business Process Expert has sufficient and relevant knowledge of the logic implemented in an application

Role #2) Automation Engineer: An Automation Engineer is an expert in automation testing tools.

Role #3) QA Tester: QA Tester is a Quality Center user that defines values for business process test, executes them and reviews results.

Why BPT Methodology?

BPT is a transformation that is used to solve traditional problems with automation testing, viz.

• Lack of coordination between manual testers/SMEs and automation engineers
• Lack of automation development standards
• Automation engineer’s insufficient knowledge of the application may cause inefficient scripts
• Huge maintenance efforts

How is BPT implemented?

BPT methodology involves following steps:

Step #1: Get The Tool: Companies purchase the license and install the tool

Step #2: Create Application Areas: Create, populate and maintain a logical repository for testing resources.

Step #3: Create Test Components: SMEs can create new components and define them in the business component module (Quality Center). A Business Component module includes-

• Details: General summary of purpose/goals, pre-conditions, and post-conditions
• Snapshots: Images that helps visualize description of the components(if required)
• Parameters: Specifies the input and output component parameter values that enable a component to receive data from external sources and pass to other components.
• Design Steps: Create, view and automate the manual steps of business components
• Used by: Includes currently selected business components
• Component Request Pane: Handling new component requests generated in the test plan module. Let’s say, you are creating a test and identify a missing component this is where you generate a request for it.

Step #4: Create Actual Business Process Tests: SMEs create a business process test. They select a component that can be applied to the business process. Each component can be used differently for different business processes.

Step #5: Automate Business Components: Once SMEs create a business process template the components are ready for coding and can be forwarded to QA testers.

Components are categorized into two categories:

• Component shell: The outer layer of component- the information in this shell is available at the test level
• Component Implementation: The inner layer of component – The information in this layer is available at only component level.

Step #6: Running Business Process Tests:  Run business process test like regular tests.

Common Differences between Components and Test:

Test and components are individual concepts of BPT.

Following guidelines are useful to differentiate between them:

• A component is a single entity that can not contain multiple actions
• When working with components all external files are to be stored in the Quality Center project to which you are connected
• There is no individual repository for individual components. All components should use a shared repository
• The name of the component node cannot be changed, it should be the same as that of the saved component
• Resources can be added through the application repository and not directly to the component

Micro Focus Business Process Testing Business Process Testing Tool (Micro Focus BPT)

Micro Focus Business Process Testing is industry’s first complete role-based test automation tool that enables SMEs to build, data-drive, execute and document test the use of any programming language.

Learn more about Micro Focus Business Process Testing Software here.

Benefits of Micro Focus BPT Tool: 

1. Simplifies and speeds up the test design process by using components
2. Allow QA and testing teams to start the test design process much earlier i.e.; during system design or so
3. Generates automated tests and test case documentation in a single step
4. Enables QA teams to use a combined package of test assets that were created adhering to the best practices, thus making test automation better.
5. Increases productivity of SMEs and QA Engineers

Advantages of BPT

1. Eliminates the need of creating a separate automation framework
2. Automation testing becomes structured with the use of business components
3. Reduces efforts required for writing and maintaining test automation scripts
4. BPT is independent of detailed testing script
5. High reusability with data-driven components
6. Testers do not require technical expertise in automation
7. Manual testers are free to remove unwanted component without affecting the code

Disadvantages of BPT

1. It is required to purchase additional license for BPT Framework for test scripts
2. BPT Framework can be used only when you have Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) access

Conclusion

Business Process Testing is an advanced testing technique. It is sort of the happy medium between the too simplistic manual testing and too complex automation testing.

It helps to create specification of difficult business processes and makes automation suitable for high-level processes.

Quick, efficient, utilization of expertise, easy implementation of standards are some strong features which make BPT a powerful testing technique.

Have questions on BPT? Feel free to post in comments below.