This webinar is about the use of TM Forum Frameworx eTOM best-practice process models for the generation of end-to-end test cases.

• Gain insights into a methodology of how to align the business with the IT view
• How to incorporate Enterprise Architect for modeling and test automation in your test management strategy
• Live demonstration showing eTOM-based process models with Enterprise Architect for test automation with tools like HP ALM

Being a test engineer who is responsible for specifying test cases and test data isn´t an easy job. Based on provided (often incomplete) specifications test cases have to be constructed and test data derived. Incomplete overview of business processes and related, supporting IT systems impact the completeness of testing and hence the application quality. Also the efforts involved in defining test cases and test data are commonly very high.  A test case consists of the sequence of activities defined by the end-to-end path generated by the model-based testing and the data to be used for test case execution.

Zephyr® is a leading test management software available as Zephyr® Enterprise Edition and as add-on for JIRA® on-premise or JIRA® cloud solutions. With Zephyr® on JIRA Cloud companies can create, plan, and execute tests right inside of their JIRA® cloud instance. The BPM-X® team has developed an integration link for a project between BPM modeling tools such as ARIS®, CaseWise, SPARX Enterprise Architect, Microsoft Visio® and many others to generate test-cases and scripts right out of the business process models and diagrams and to instantly load them into Zephyr® on JIRA®.

TFS is the central hub for development using Microsoft Visual Studio managing teams, resources and agile development processes. BPM-X® is the middleware for model-based testing and links modeling tools like Microsoft Visio®, Software AG ARIS, Sparx Enterprise Architect or many others with the testing and requirements capabilities of TFS. 

A systems development life cycle (SDLC) platform can be built with a best-of-breed approach using BPM, requirements, development and testing tools from different vendors. In such a scenario the BPM-X model bus and transformation tools are very helpful in combining various tools and methodologies to establish a continuous development process.

The support of business by IT and applications is preferentially described by business process models as part of a solution blueprint. Typical requirements are the demand for more efficiency, lower production costs and compliance with different policies, standards and regulations. Hence IT applications are increasingly interwoven with business complexity. “How to ensure the level of correctness needed for customized applications to avoid impact on the business due to insufficient quality assurance?” is one of the major questions on this matter.In agile projects the key issue in terms of testing methodologies is indeed the setup of a valid and plausible metrics scheme that permits to measure and compare the quality of a solution continuously over a period of time.

For BPA (business process analysis) many tools are on the market: ARIS®, CaseWise®, MEGA, IBM® Rational® System Architect, OpenText® ProVision and others. But you may say ‘this is well, fine and good, but the common siutation in industry and large organizations is that Microsoft® Visio® is used throughout business departments and project teams for business process mapping.’ This post reviews how Visio® process models can be leveraged for business-driven testing and the generation of test cases.

Modeling with BPMN™ 2.0 is nowadays a very common case for documentation and automation of business processes. However, the testing of complex models is not an easy task. BPM-X® processes BPMN™ models from tools like CAMUNDA, generates test cases and uses tools like HP ALM for test execution and automation.

Business analysts often spend a lot of time and efforts when it comes to creating a nice decomposition of an organization´s business architecture. Typically the architecture design is driven by organizational or business area requirements. Depending on the frameworks used such as SCOR®, APQC® or DODAF and NAF the process levels describing the implementation of IT systems  may yield to a quite complex architectural construct of nested diagrams and viewpoints. This really challenges QA teams to prepare test-cases for integration and regression tests in the context of user-acceptance testing (UAT) of end-to-end process flows. Here the reverse decomposition technique facilitates the design of perfect test-cases for manual and automated test execution.

Sparx Systems™ Enterprise Architect is a widely used tool for process mapping and modeling just as HP ALM is the leading tool in the market for test management. Combining both tools proves the formula 1 + 1 = 3 to be true: benefit from both the added value of leveraging business process models for requirements management and generating model-based test cases.

With this article we present an solution approach for test automation is to use

• a test automation tool like Katalon Studio for development of test cases of IT application’s user dialogs (like HTML forms)
• a tool like Microsoft Visio to document (also called model or map) the business processes that are supported by the IT application
• The BPM-X® software to derive the end-to-end path from process models for automated execution

The challenge in demanding enterprise projects isn’t the technical development of test cases for the user dialogs of the IT application themselves. The complex question is the arrangement of those test cases in the right execution sequence of end-to-end paths through a business process and the determination of therefore related test data for positive and negative tests.

A test case developer can´t oversee the complexity of an enterprise business process as he has a more focused view to the functional behavior of user dialogs and the related test cases of IT application level.

In the organizational viewpoint of an enterprise project, the different project participants like process owners, business analysts, IT application solution experts and test engineers need to collaborate without any communication and media breaks. But in reality, different languages are spoken by participants, redundant and bulky, outdated prose documentation are used. The consequence is a lack of traceability from business requirements to IT application delivery. This results in overall weak implementation quality and high efforts by expensive late change-requests because of uncovered or incorrect implemented requirements.

Let us have a look at a simple procure-to-pay example to show how test automation works.

The procure-to-pay business process flow is depicted with Microsoft Visio as a business process diagram, stored in a file with the extension VSDX. In the scope of business process management

• a (business process) model is an abstract, simplified documentation of a business process flow
• a diagram is the visual representation of a model using a specific visual notation

To document (also called model, depict or map) a business process flow in Visio, a visual notation like flowchart or BPMN^TM can be used. For this tutorial we selected the very common Visio flowchart notation with swimlanes. A swimlane is used to describe a processes participant like a Ship Officer or Buying Agent. Business activities placed in a swimlane are execute by this specific participant role. In general, a participant role can be a human or an IT application.

Each blue box in the business process diagram is a businessactivity like “Prepare Requisition” or “Prepare Request for Quotation” usually supported by an IT application’s user dialog. For a web application this might be an HTML form or a Java user dialog. In some cases, the business activity itself has a more complex workflow of business activities and therefore is depicted by a separate diagram. To simplify the documentation (modeling) of a business process flow model, more complex business activities are detailed into a separate business process model called sub-process models and linked to the respective business activity.

Let us have a look to a more complex business activity “Make Payment” in the following figure.

The “Make payment” activity is linked to a detailed sub-process model that describes the specific process flow of the “Make payment” activity, shown in the following figure.

This “Procure-to-pay” business process has all in all 20 business activities (blue rectangles) and 5 business rules (purple diamonds). The green boxes are showing input and output data objects like a “Goods Order” or an “Invoice”. There are many possible end-to-end path through the business process model, executing the business activities in a correct specific order. This order or execution sequence that is decided by the logic of business rules. E.g. for an “Order request is greater as 10000”, a “sign-off of the order” is required.

Now let´s have a look at the longest path having all business activities included of this simple example business process:

Each blue box business activity is usually supported by user dialog of an IT application. The user dialogs are tested by one or more test cases and specific test data created by a test automation tool like Katalon Studio. The test engineer must assemble the test cases in a right order with the right test data to have a correct sequence of to be executed test cases for the procure-to-pay end-to-end process.

A real life business processes can have several dozens of business activities, many rules and many sub-processes. This ends-up in hundreds of relevant end-to-end paths to be tested for

• system-integration testing (SIT),
• user acceptance testing (UAT),
• business and non-functional requirements-coverage testing
• and finally the ongoing regression testing.

This is the moment the BPM-X® solution comes into the picture of a business process driven end-to-end testing. Based on business process models, developed by tools such as Microsoft Visio, the BPM-X® software generates the end-to-end paths based on different test coverage algorithms. The technology behind is called model-based testing (MBT).

The BPM-X® generated deliverables are used to orchestrate the predefined user dialog test cases for the correct sequence of test execution in the test automation tool.

For Katalon Studio,

• each BPM-X® generated end-to-end path becomes a so-called test suite. The test suite is a correct sequence of test cases that have been pre-recorded by Katalon Studio.
• The BPM-X® generated set of test suites are a so-called test suite collection. The test suite collection corresponds to the business process itself.

In short abstract, the solution approach is formalized in 3 steps, using

1. a modeling tool to describe the business process
2. a test automation tool to develop (record and modify) the test cases for user dialogs and to execute test cases
3. the BPM-X® software to generate the end-to-end path from the business process documented with the modeling tool and execute automated end-to-end testing with the test automation tool

The following figure shows the solution approach in an overview:

The business process architecture is described by a functional and process decomposition of models (the left turquoise triangle in the figure). Assuming that 2 IT applications (yellow rectangles) called App X with forms A and B and another application called App Y with the Form C are supporting and implementing a business process on level 4 (right turquoise rectangles named “L5”). The BPM-X® software generates from the business process model the end-to-end path as a correct order of L5 business activities. Each L5 business activity is supported by an IT application that’s form(s) are (is) tested by a specific test case, developed with Katalon Studio.

There is a BPM-X® tutorial available that includes prepared artifacts for easy execution of the tutorial exercises:

• Microsoft® Visio® documented business process model including a sub-process model
• HTML mockup application for the execution of test cases using MiniWeb server and HTML forms
• Katalon Studio project data with pre-recorded test cases of the HTML forms
• BPM-X® to read the Visio® diagram and generate Katalon Studio test suites and test suites collection.

A recording of the webinar is available at Youtube:

At the bottom line, the methodology and concepts model-based testing of business processes is linked with the methodology of behavior-driven development (BDD) and testing.

Business process models created in the blueprinting phase of an SOA or ERP project can be leveraged for managing and improving the end-to-end integration, user acceptance and non-regression testing. The blueprinting exercise can deliver you much more value than just documenting and scoping of a new IT solution.

TransWare is a gold sponsor of the 5th UCAAT 2017 - ETSI User Conference on Advanced Automated Testing in Berlin from 11. Oct - 13.Oct.2017. 

Our sales team receives a lot of inquiries to generate test-cases from existing business process models for model-based testing using tools like Excel®, JIRA® or HP ALM for test management. Besides Visio®, Enterprise Architect® and ARIS®, new configurations for IBM® Rational® System Architect, CaseWise Corporate Modeler® and others like OpenText® ProVision are on the way to expand the trial offering.

Surveys from leading analysts tell that Microsoft Visio® is the tool that is used for more than 70% of business process management (BPM) scenarios. In complex IT applications like SAP® ERP or Oracle® ERP projects, consultancies and system-integrators create business blueprint documentation with Microsoft Visio®. With the integration of Visio® into the leading test-management suite HP ALM, our R&D team has closed the so far open gap between requirements and process management on one side and the test management of complex IT applications on the other side.

In test management it's a long and ongoing discussion if a better a system model or a specific test model should be elaborated to describe the behaviour of a SUT (system under test). In this post we include a webinar to present the BPM-X approach of using system models for test-case generation. Existing models like process flow documentations or ERP blueprints are re-used and improved to derive test-cases by the concept of model-based testing.

In 2013 our teams focused very much on customer projects integrating various tools such as ARIS, Visio, CaseWise, Sparx Enterprise Architect, IBM Rational System Architect, OpenText ProVision, IBM BlueWorks, SAP, HP ALM and many others to perfect the universal model translation between different modeling languages, EA frameworks and vendor specific implementation of standards such as BPMN. For 2014 we see a huge demand in the EA/BPM enterprise management market for more operationalization, more agility for faster value delivery to the business and to reduce IT costs.Organizations looking to leverage model assets and build continuous value chains to integrate different enterprise management disciplines, to improve communication between different departments or project teams and to escape from management silos are well recognized requirements and needs from the professional market.