patrick poulin

Using API Testing to Close QA Gaps

Many of the worst QA gaps emerge early—during collaboration by remote teams on tight deadlines to design or update mobile apps, web platforms and web services. Traditionally, this has left little time to create and execute robust tests, resulting in higher rates of false-negatives and bugs going to production.

A proven way to improve collaboration early in the lifecycle is to ensure that quality is built into all builds. In plain speak, teams must be empowered to do more end-to-end API testing that can check full API consumer flows and side-effects. Otherwise, QAs can only write tests that check the goals of siloed teams. Even if every test passes for each siloed team, it does not mean that all components and APIs will integrate to function and perform as expected.

Yet QA/testers may hesitate to do more end-to-end API testing for fear of bottlenecking release cycles. But modern end-to-end API testing has come a long way since the introduction of free API testing by Postman, SoapUI and Sauce Labs. Today, in-sprint testing can be set up to tackle any scale of test case proliferation and flow scenarios.

Takeaways:

• What QA gaps in UI testing can be closed with API testing

• How much UI testing should be done faster and cheaper with API testing

• How much consumer-driven contract testing vs. end-to-end functional testing do you need for consistent quality at speed

• Why you should reuse end-to-end functional API tests as API monitors in any environments, including production