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Interactive Voice Response Systems (IVRS) Test Automation

It is challenging to setup automation for IVR systems because of the complexity of setting up test systems, Synchronization of calls generated with call flow being used, the ability of the automation framework to simulate all supported actions of the call flow and large volume of calls to be generated.

I wanted to share my experience in setting up test environments for automation testing when testing IVR systems with DTMF functionality. At the end of this blog, I have outlined how the same approach can be used for automated testing of Speech enabled IVR systems.

Can 100% test automation be achieved?

Some of the challenges commonly seen with automation are:

1.When the first build comes out in a sprint/iteration, it will have defects. These defects may be blocking and may not allow for automation script development to proceed. The most critical issue is to find defects and report so developers can fix them quickly and complete the functionality.

Development, Testing and Communication

When was last time one heard that ‘we do not need testing or testers or automation’. Could have been a while. The importance of formal testing process emerging out of formal QA strategy has picked two to three decades ago after several disasters occurred in the software industry specifically with Y2K and the amount of time, money and effort spent on the same. Ever since then this stream has picked up.

Integration Testing: Are you allocating enough resources/time?

As a program manager, something you'll need to give a lot of thought to at the beginning of the project is integration testing, both across the components that are in your program, and with other systems across your company. Most programs allocate a lot of time for functional testing of each component and relatively little time to integration testing under the assumption that things will go pretty smoothly.