Eggplant Injects AI Into Application Testing

Eggplant has infused its automated testing platform with deep learning algorithms that automatically identify and classify user interface (UI) elements such as buttons and text fields across any platform and then generate all the automation assets needed to instantly run a test.

In addition, Eggplant has made it easier to visualize the overlap between common application failure patterns that can be used to automatically optimize testing.

Finally, Eggplant has also revamped its own user interface to make it easier to deploy its platform across multiple test machines.

Company CTO Gareth Smith said in the months and years ahead it’s apparent AI will be playing a much larger role in application testing. There are simply too many platforms on which application code is now being deployed for testing teams to keep pace manually.

Each platform requires tweaks to the user interface to optimize the customer experience. At a time when many organizations are accelerating digital business transformation initiatives, the user application experience has never been more critical, he noted.

Eggplant’s Digital Automation Intelligence (DAI) platform is designed to automate the entire testing lifecycle process as part of a larger best DevOps practice. The rate at which application tests can be built and run can be a bottleneck as applications are being built. The DAI platform looks to first automate the creation of UI tests and then launch them against application code to eliminate as much testing friction as possible, said Smith.

IT teams also can track user behavior to create journeys based on user interactions with applications and store tests created using modeling tools provides by Eggplant in its cloud service. That approach not only accelerates the application development process, but it also serves to reduce the total cost of application development, which is critical at a time when IT budgets are squeezed because of the economic downturn brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

As part of that effort, Eggplant provides DevOps teams with access to an application programming interface (API) through which they can self-service their own tests. That may not eliminate the need for a separate testing function within the application development process, but Smith noted it does make it easier for developers to discover potential issues on their own versus having to wait on application testers to discover them.

Regardless of who conducts the testing, the rise of DevOps means there’s more application code to be tested than ever. As such, testing backlogs within many IT organizations are growing. The challenge is finding a way to conduct application testing that doesn’t result in application deadlines being missed. After all, when deadlines are missed, typically the first thing that gets scaled back is testing. Many DevOps teams convince themselves that any issues that come up can be addressed in the next update.

Of course, once end users reject an application because issues were never discovered during testing, it’s not uncommon for an application to be rolled back. Rather than having to choose between those two evils, it might be better for all concerned to rely more on automation and AI to accelerate the testing process as much as possible.