Continuous Integration and Visual GUI Testing: Benefits and Drawbacks in Industrial Practice

Continuous integration (CI) is growing in industrial popularity, spurred on by market trends towards faster delivery and higher quality software. A key facilitator of CI is automated testing that should be executed, automatically, on several levels of system abstraction. However, many systems lack the interfaces required for automated testing. Others lack test automation coverage of the system under test's (SUT) graphical user interface (GUI) as it is shown to the user. One technique that shows promise to solve these challenges is Visual GUI Testing (VGT), which uses image recognition to stimulate and assert the SUT's behavior. Research has presented the technique's applicability and feasibility in industry but only limited support, from an academic setting, that the technique is applicable in a CI environment. In this paper we presents a study from an industrial design research study with the objective to help bridge the gap in knowledge regarding VGT's applicability in a CI environment in industry. Results, acquired from interviews, observations and quantitative analysis of 17.567 test executions, collected over 16 weeks, show that VGT provides similar benefits to other automated test techniques for CI. However, several significant drawbacks, such as high costs, are also identified. The study concludes that, although VGT is applicable in an industrial CI environment, its severe challenges require more research and development before the technique becomes efficient in practice.