Paychex Selects Perfecto Mobile to Deliver Mobile App Test Automation and Support Agile Development

Paychex, a leading provider of payroll, human resource, and benefits outsourcing solutions, offers its nearly 600,000 clients hybrid mobile apps for anytime/anywhere Payroll and HR-services productivity. Clients use a variety of mobile devices to access Paychex apps. Assuring consistent, high-quality user experiences across different mobile devices is a top priority.

By adopting Perfecto Mobile’s MobileCloud Automation, Paychex:

  • Improved productivity using Perfecto Mobile’s integration with their existing HP UFT test framework
  • Enhanced team efficiency by shifting device lab management to the cloud
  • Increased test efficiency by implementing device-agnostic test automation

With these changes, Paychex was now ready to support a more agile software development process.

"Device management was a huge benefit of the solution. We want to test on the actual devices customers are using. We are simply unwilling to put customers at risk. We also discovered the speed of adding new devices. Adding devices through Perfecto Mobile was more efficient than acquiring them internally."

Sharon Chamberlain; Test Automation Manager, Paychex

 

Challenge

Paychex’s initial release of their hybrid apps brought two test engineering teams located in separate facilities together for testing using multiple mobile devices. The challenge soon became clear. The process of acquiring devices, temporarily bringing different teams into one conference room, and manually executing test cases with devices passed back and forth was inefficient. Moreover, looking forward, the team realized app functionality was expected to significantly grow from a simple read-only application to executing more complex transactions. Improved functionality would drive more test cases and longer test cycles, ultimately lengthening product release cycles. And, could they meet these challenges while leveraging their existing HP UFT based workflow.

There had to be a better way.

Identifying a solution for sustainable, cross-platform mobile test automation became a priority for the test engineering organization.

KEY REQUIREMENTS:

  • Support their existing HP UFT-based test framework built
  • Mobile test automation with a proven enterprise track record
  • Access to real devices for testing and easier device lifecycle management

Solution

Paychex conducted a competitive search and selected the Perfecto Mobile platform. Perfecto Mobile delivered robust test automation on real, carrier-connected devices managed centrally and tightly integrated with their HP environment.

HP UFT INTEGRATION

The existing test framework was easily extended to mobile. With the existing HP UFT expertise and Perfecto Mobile’s seamless integration, the Automation Engineering team rapidly incorporated mobile functions into their reusable function library.

ENTERPRISE PROVEN AUTOMATION

The solution demonstrated ability to support sustainable, cross platform test execution across iOS and android platforms.

CENTRALLY MANAGED REAL DEVICES

Perfecto Mobile’s Device-as-a-Service fully satisfied the real-device requirement and delivered the added value of relieving the burden of local device management.

Results

HP UFT INTEGRATION ENABLES 50% FASTER TEST AUTOMATION DEVELOPMENT

Perfecto Mobile's automation tool, MobileCloud Automation, exceeded business objectives by handling rapidly growing test requirements. Automation development was accelerated by 50% by leveraging Perfecto Mobile’s pre-existing functions and Paychex’s 100+ in-house developed mobile functions. The shared Paychex web & mobile apps function library contains 1,000+ functions automating the entire process from infrastructure readiness through reporting. Fast script development resulted in a faster start to automated testing.

PAYCHEX BUILD AND TEST AUTOMATION IMPROVES SOFTWARE QUALITY

With three release candidates per version, regression testing would have become resource constrained and risky without automation. By implementing MobileCloud Automation, Paychex automated the majority of user interface and regression testing. The test team can reliably estimate regression test cycle duration, scale testing on real devices as business requirements change and limit the need for additional resources despite expanding test coverage and more tests to execute over a wide set of devices.

Perfecto Mobile support for key HP UFT features such as Descriptive Programming techniques and Object Spy helps improve test reliability and repeatability while reducing script development time.

DEVICE-AS-A-SERVICE INCREASES TEAM EFFICIENCY AND CONNECTS DISTRIBUTED TEAMS

From the beginning, Paychex decided on using real devices rather than emulators. Emulators added an unacceptable risk factor. Perfecto Mobile’s solution provided real devices and solved two additional problems, device management and support for teams located in different facilities. Using a device-as-a-service offering eliminated the multi-week process to order and acquire new devices along with resources required for the ongoing inventory management and maintenance of mobile phones and tablets. Cloud-based devices enabled distributed teams to access a shared device pool directly from their desktops. Prior to implementing MobileCloud Automation, manually testing Paychex’s mobile app version 1 required the two Test Engineering teams to come together during the testing period and share multiple devices that were passed back and forth. The proof of success is reflected in Paychex’s decision to renew and expand the solution footprint three times within the first year of adopting the Perfecto Mobile solution.