End-to-end testing on Web Experience Management Platform

Abstract

End-to-end testing (E2E) is the highest level of testing that verifies the entire system under test. Because tests of this kind are very expensive to develop and execute, they are often automated and used only to test critical functionalities of the system. Despite the abundance of non-academic resources, literature content on this topic is still lacking.

Web Experience Management System (WEMP) is a new solution for developing website functionality, where the consultancy company injecting their script di- rectly into customer websites. While providing the flexibility, this also introduces new challenges since development work by customer will not be tested during con- sultancy workflow and vice-versa. Including E2E testing in the current process could help to guard against those misalignment.

The goal of this thesis is to implement an automated E2E testing into the current pipeline of an WEMP. The work consists of finding requirements for the needed artifacts and evaluating the result. The process is based on design science research where the artefact is the integration of E2E testing into the pipeline according to the requirements of a case client project. The result of the project is the automated E2E testing pipeline with integrated Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Delivery (CD) and monitoring setup required for the case project.

The result conforms with the preliminary study on E2E testing. It showed how expensive and fragile E2E tests are. In conclusion, E2E tests are helpful but they should be limited to the most crucial customer journey. Moreover, tests should be implemented so that execution and reporting practices are useful for developers.