How do you keep your end-to-end test cases updated and maintainable?

In Omni channel marketing field, end to end testing plays the crucial role to ensure the campaign quality. Scope must cover : Different channels involved in the campaigns, data set up, environment set up as exact replica of production, Integration of different systems.

Scope is about defining boundaries for an extent to which end to end testing would be done and the overall objective is to validate high values application flow is working in shortest testing time as possible. Pros : 1. High Level Sanity validation. 2. Fast turn around time. 3. Quick feedback at CICD for dev to checking their code for further deeper validations by QA. Cons: 1. Shallow integration testing of apps flow. Room of error or bugs in complex functionalities might get missed. 2. Integration outside the scope of the end to end flow is not been verified.

Test data for end to end testing is very crucial and should replicate production like data and should be planned and prepared in advance.

- What are the key features and functionalities you want to cover? - What user flows and interactions do you want to test? - What risks and dependencies do you intend to minimize? Thinking about these strategies allows you to prioritize the most essential and critical elements, avoiding redundant or unnecessary test scenarios.

To achieve sustainable testing, you need clear team transparency, timely updates, effective communication, and a unified approach. In planning and conducting tests, it's vital to align with the product's goals: What are the key priorities? What needs to be focused on right now? These considerations should be continuously evaluated and adjusted.

This goes hand-in-hand with scope. Providing e2e scope definition is done in collaboration with those responsible for API and Unit testing, the test case designs must focus on common user journeys. Avoid the temptation to find and follow edge cases. Edge cases should be dealt with by identifying them and handing them off to design teams to perform either graceful failures or exception management. The goal of e2e is not to test everything, but to ensure that user or process can complete successfully. Again, this is based on collaboration across different types of testing to make all as effective and maintainable as possible for optimum coverage and confidence.

Adopting good scripting practices while writing test scripts will help. For example, avoid hard-coding UI element locations and create reusable functions wherever possible. Analyze your test run reports and prioritize which issues you need to fix. Don't just look for band-aid solutions. If there's a bigger problem, like a change in the way tests are written or UI overhaul, then address those issues. In my experience, many testers just look at these findings as items to tick off a list. That defeats the purpose of test results.

Monitoring test cases may not capture the broader context or the real-world usage of the system. Relying on automated test cases might miss out on user experience issues, integration problems, or edge cases that require more nuanced, exploratory testing and feedback from real users.