Is Automated IoT Testing a game changer?

When you’re in the embedded software world, buzzwords and tech releases become linked to your memories, unlocking a specific moment in history when you talk about them (RIP Blackberry messenger ☠).

Having visited a few of the big tradeshows over the past year I can safely say automated testing is one of these hot topics. It makes sense really, as it combines both the buzz of automation and IoT, with the convenience of enhancing product quality, while saving time and effort!

So, when the powers that be (my boss) said we were doing a webinar called – automated IoT testing is it a game changer for product quality – I was there with bells on.

And as always, to save you time if you couldn’t attend, I’ve listed my top takeaways below:

Automated IoT Testing – is it a game changer? Our top takeaways…

SOFTWARE IS REALLY HARD NOW!

Long gone are the good old days when you could have a small team mastering all the software needed to release a product.

Thanks to the rise of AI, connectivity, more complex user interfaces, security risks, and much more – if you want a high-quality product that people will use, you need embedded software as part of your product development.

And as your development becomes more complex, so will your testing needs.

Find your bugs, fast.

One of the key wins of automated IoT testing is its ability to drastically shorten the duration between development and testing, meaning you can work in a smarter, more agile way.

Think about the possibilities of testing the work your developer has finished that day. You come back the next morning and everything that needs fixing is waiting for you.

This is a huge improvement on waiting until the end of product development and then finding issues, resulting in a longer time to market and more costs.

There are some automated tests that aren’t possible with humans

Some tests take days or even months of repeated testing. This just isn’t possible or even an affordable option to think about doing manually.

Imagine your team running repeated tests in shifts for 48 hours to test an important security feature. You find an issue, fix it, and then you must run the test all over again!

With automated testing, you can let the platform run the tests, while your developers move on to the next stage of development.

Automated testing can also bring new capabilities for endurance testing, robustness, performance measurement and more.

Witekio has its own Automated IoT Testing Tool – Pluma!

Shameless plug – but it is our webinar!

Witekio has gathered all its knowledge, hard work and experience across hundreds of products to create Pluma, a testing tool specifically designed to help OEM’s.

Why? Because we needed one that worked for our (and our customer’s) needs! We were willing to buy one, but we couldn’t find a single tool that was able to integrate all layers and allow us to perform global IoT testing.

What began as a timesaving project four years ago, is now a fully-fledged IoT testing tool.

You can see all about it in the webinar here, but one of my personal favourite features of Pluma is that it makes the reporting of tests uniformed, standardized and reliable. Say goodbye to human testing errors, which can easily happen on longer more laborious tests.

Is Automated testing all you need? Yes and no – Hear us out.

As already said, with automated IoT Testing you can empower product quality by enabling early bug testing and integrate testing day to day.

It will do the majority of manual tests needed to bring a product to market.

HOWEVER, as Pierre Gal stressed in the webinar, tooling is tooling – not a human replacement. Remember there are tests that can’t be done by machine. For example, if you want to do exploratory testing i.e., seeing how it actually works, the user experience and more.

Plus, we believe the QA team are evil geniuses , so we’re not about to annoy them.

Webinar Overview:

Event:  Automated IoT testing – is it a game changer for product quality?

Duration: 49 minutes

Presenters:  

Pierre Gal, Solutions Director – Witekio 

Julien Vial Detambel – Lead Developer Pluma – Witekio 

Topics: 

Automated testing: Why, How and What?
Automatic deployment with Pluma, testing and reporting.

Real-time demonstrations of the platform in action, including:

Deployment: how to integrate Pluma in a CI/CD and how to run and get automatic reports for agile projects.
Test: how to write a test, execute it, write your own technical actions, and then use them in a test.
Reporting: how to get reports, what information is embedded, and reporting using excel, JSON or Xray.