Challenges in Automated Testing Through Graphical User Interface

Abstract

The widespread use of iterative and incremental processes and continuous integration practices in software development has shortened the development cycles, drastically limiting the time for testing and quality assurance of each release. At the same time the software systems are getting ever more complex, systems of systems with multitude of platforms and devices to support. In practice, unit testing is widely automated but system level testing is more difficult to automate, especially if the system includes graphical user interfaces (GUI) for the end users. This paper describes the challenges of automating the system level testing through GUI in the modern, agile software development environment, and envisions possible future solutions for some of the challenges.