My Innovative Solution to Test Automation: TestWise, the Next-Gen Functional Testing IDE

Help automated testers to be highly productive!

While I was writing the “My Innovative Solution to …” series, such as “TestWise’s Keep the Browser Open after Executing an Individual Test” and “TestWise’s Attach test execution to the existing browser”. I realized that the TestWise tool itself is an innovation, as there was (still is) no dedicated Selenium/Watir testing tool that qualifies “Next-Generational Functional Testing IDE”.

Table of Contents:
· A Story
· TestWise Acknowledgements
· What is special or innovative about TestWise? 
· TestWise Development Milestones
  ∘ iTest2 v1
  ∘ TestWise v2, v3, v4
  ∘ TestWise 5
  ∘ TestWise 6
· Commercialization History 
· Marketing

A Story: Don’t let others destroy your dream

At CITCON 2009 conference (informal format, which I quite like), I was alone preparing to show something. One person came by and saw the test execution on my laptop, he asked: “What is that?”

I replied: “Automated Testing with Watir”.

He said: “OK, I know it. (Watir was the mainstream in web test automation then), What tool did you use?”

I answered: “a testing IDE I developed. I named it …”

He looked at me, and said in a mocking tone: “You, created a testing tool?! IDE?!, hey, hey …”. He shook his head and walked away.

It might sound crazy for a programmer to create a functional testing IDE from scratch in his/her spare time. Yes, I did that. The acknowledgements, praises, and solid proof of commercial customers proved that TestWise, my testing IDE, has been successful. I have been using TestWise since 2008 every working day.

Frankly, when I started this journey of developing a functional testing tool, I didn’t think much about the effort, or the challenges, just wanted to use something more productive to develop/run/debug automated test scripts.

“Lesson Learned: Don’t let others destroy your dreams.” — Zhimin Zhan

TestWise Acknowledgements

TestWise reached the world stage.

• In the presentation “Trends in Agile Testing” (2009) by Lisa Crispin, co-author of the Agile Testing book…