10.2 Keeping Abreast of the Technology Landscape
Software development continues to evolve and the SUT will, over time, incorporate these technology updates. The test automation solution must anticipate and adapt to these changes so that automation continues to work reliably and efficiently. It is recommended to perform a tool evaluation on a regular basis (every 2 years is recommended). Many tools, whether COTS, GOTS, or OSS regularly have incremental updates made to them. Before automatically updating the tool to the latest version, it is best to find out what improvements were made to the tool and if those improvements have any impact to the project using those tools. If it makes sense to make the update, this should first be tested in a separate environment to ensure that the update functions properly and does not inadvertently affect any other software or components previously installed. Generally, the latest release will have the latest security updates and features so updates are recommended.
When an automated framework is built with modularity in mind, specific components of the framework can be swapped out or swapped in without having to re-write the entire framework. For example, a project that originally used browsers has now migrated to native mobile applications as well. The requirement now is to also support native mobile apps. This could potentially be accomplished in one of several ways:
Each condition allows for a different approach to adding mobile app support to the framework.