We recently caught up with Tech Mahindra’s QA practice, Digital Assurance Services, to assess recent progress with their IP strategy.

Digital Assurance Services’ test automation strategy is based on IP and accelerators in its LitmusT platform. The company has been aggregating and integrating automation artifacts within LitmusT and intends to automate the full testing lifecycle, currently, across test execution (MAGiX), code quality, test support services with test environment, and test data management, analytics and AI, model-based testing, and non-functional testing.

Unlike some of its peers, Tech Mahindra is not looking to monetize LitmusT but is using the tools and accelerators it contains within its managed services engagements. The company is also relying mainly on open source software, using COTS only when no open source alternative is available. Just three of LitmusT’s modules rely on COTS; all the others use open-source software.

Tech Mahindra Continues to Invest in Functional Test Automation

MAGiX, which focuses on test execution, is a core module in LitmusT. Launched earlier this year as its next-gen test execution platform, Tech Mahindra was initially targeting SAP applications (ECC, S/4 HANA, and Fiori), rapidly expanding it to web-based applications, Java and .NET applications.

MAGiX aims to combine the ease of record-and-play first-generation test execution software tools with keyword-driven tools. In this approach, test scripts are created automatically during the process and software objects identified through its Object Spy feature. As a result, when the next release of the application comes, the test scripts are likely to still work. Test script maintenance activity is reduced. MAGiX also handles test data and integrates with test execution software such as Micro Focus UFT and Selenium, and with DevOps tools such as Jenkins.

Digital Assurance Services continues to invest in MAGiX, expanding it to API testing and database testing, and recently launching its Visual Testing offering.

Integrating Functional and UX Testing

Visual Testing expands the functional test execution approach of MAGiX to UX testing, focusing on automating image layout comparison, colors, and fonts across browsers and screen sizes. A major use case is apps for mobile devices where small screen sizes impact the layout. Potential buyers of Visual Testing go beyond the B2C industry and Tech Mahindra highlights that companies in regulated industries such as pharmaceuticals are interested in the offering for their data entry needs.

Visual Testing’s approach relies on having a screen baseline to compare with the screens of future releases. It highlights areas on the screen that have deviated from the initial screen baseline and identifies where the change came from in an icon (e.g. a change in the code). Tech Mahindra will go through all changes and decide if the bugs that Visual Testing identified are acceptable.

Visual Testing relies on scripts that are embedded in the main functional test scripts. The development of Visual Testing test scripts takes one to two weeks. Meanwhile, Tech Mahindra requires screenshots of all the different screen sizes.

Visual Testing uses several technologies, including for pixel-by-pixel comparison, open source software Sikuli and a COTS Applitools. Tech Mahindra has an agreement with Applitools and highlights that Visual Testing can be activated on MAGiX by pressing one button.

Adoption of UX Testing Will Accelerate

Quality Assurance continues to be an area of ongoing innovation in IT services. Tech Mahindra’s approach is attractive in that it converges functional and UX testing and allows simultaneous execution.

Despite all the discussions about UX in the last few years, we have not seen a broad adoption of UX testing, except in regulatory-led accessibility testing. By integrating Visual Testing in the DevOps testing tools, Tech Mahindra is making usability testing more automated and almost invisible. This automated approach is key to increasing the usage of UX testing.