The agile approach remains a significant trend in software development, where the role of the tester is gradually pushed out of agile teams. On the contrary, the role of the developer within the agile team is expected to extend it to the area of testing, and thus to take over the tasks of the tester.

There is an effort that the people working on the project are both developers and testers and have the so-called developerˈs skills and testerˈs mindset.

MINDSET DEVELOPER vs. TESTER

However, it remains a well-known fact that the mindset of the developer and the tester are different from each other, which can be observed in each phase of SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle). While the developer asks questions: ˈHow would I program it? How to make it work? ˈ, the tester asks: ˈWhat can go wrong? Where there may be vulnerabilities? ˈ and views the product from the user's perspective.

The reduction in the number of people in teams and the limited time devoted to testing often result in software testing being done only superficially. The developer lacks the space for more thorough testing.

With lower testing requirements, product quality decreases and the number of bugs and bug fixes during one sprint increases. Subsequently, project managers begin to realize the need for quality improvement and specialized testers are invited to the project. Thanks to their creative approach, practical product grasp and logical thinking, qualified testers will ensure independent quality control at the output, even during agile development.

While the developer carries out as priority Unit tests and tests small fragments, the tester focuses on functional testing and integration testing. He tests rather procedurally. He understands customer requirements, context and the product as a whole.

Deploying independent testing before putting the product into production minimizes risk, detects and filters errors, determines the suitability of software for production, and thus saves time and money.

Accepting differences in the thinking of developers and testers is essential for well-functioning teams. Different approaches help to find the best solutions and lead to the delivery of a reliable product that meets the customer's requirements. Only cooperation hand in hand between the tester and the developer, mutual understanding and objective feedback guarantee the best product quality.

IS THERE AN IDEAL SOLUTION?

The ideal solution, division of roles and number of people in the team are still being sought. It depends on the quality of the people working on the project and the time limits - to what extent the developers can ensure the delivery of the final product in sufficient quality. However, it can be said with certainty that manual testing and the role of the tester is important and cannot be ruled out even with AGILE approaches.

We have already written about the increasingly popular IT trend RPA (Robotic Process Automation) and its main benefits on our website. This service is the youngest in our portfolio, but the fastest growing. We also talked about it with our RPA developer Andrej.

By using RPA technology, we can offer an effective solution to speed up and simplify the often repetitive processes performed by employees in a larger or smaller company.

Applying the most well-known RPA tools such as BluePrism, UiPath and Service Trace to work processes ensures increased productivity, improved processing of transactions, minimization of errors and reduction of costs.

Our company, FPT Software, comes to market with its own RPA solution called akaBot. The akaBot tool is functionally similar to UiPath in many ways, but the price for a license is more affordable, which is one of the main criteria for customer decision-making when implementing robotic process automation in a company.

Our colleague, Vít Krajíček, who has been working with the tool for a long time, introduced it to us in more detail.

The akaBot platform consists of three parts: Studio, Agent and Center. AkaBot Studio is used by the developer to create the RPA programs. For ease of use and clarity, Drag and Drop control works in this section.

Fig.1 akaBot Studio

In the upper left panel there is a list of all pre-prepared commands / activities, from which the developer can gradually compile the entire program. Activities can be stored in sequences or a flowchart, which is designed to create more complex programs.

Offered are activities to automate work with computer files and almost all Windows programs, activities for Microsoft Excel and Word, activities to automate the sending of emails, work with SAP as well as to automate work in Internet browsers (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer).

In the absence of a specific activity, the developer can easily program it in VB.Net directly in akaBot.

Fig.2 Toolbox panel

In the lower left panel there are all created sequences and flowcharts, which increases the clarity of the interface.

Fig.3 Panel with created sequences and flowcharts

The top panel logically contains buttons for saving, starting, stopping, debugging and publishing the program to the akaBot Center or akaBot Agent, as well as buttons for other support activities.

Fig.4 Top panel of the akabot Studio

At the bottom of screen there is an Output panel with information about the status of ongoing activities. Possible errors, lists of variables, arguments and imported libraries are recorded.

Fig.5 Output panel

The panel on the right summarizes the properties of the currently used activities with the option to change the settings.

Fig.6 Activity properties panel

The second part of the platform is the akaBot Agent, which is used by the client to run RPA processes. The akaBot Agent can operate standalone or connected to the akaBot Center along with other akaBot Agents on other PCs.

The layout of the akaBot Agent interface is simple and very clear. The home page lists all published programs created in the akaBot Studio or downloaded from the akaBot Center. Another part is the Settings section for successful connection of the akaBot Agent to the akaBot Center.

Fig.7 akaBot Agent

akaBot Center is a command and control center that is used to organize akaBot Agents, programs, creating schedules, manually or automatically start processes, save login data, etc.

Fig.8 akaBot Center

The akaBot tool is currently used in our company to provide services for customers in Bratislava and Dubai, but its potential and high competitiveness predetermine its application in several projects.