Automatisering av test av legacysystem : Utmaningar och faktorer att beakta

Sammanfattning: Information systems are used by most organisations today and are critical to the business. Many organisations got one or more legacy systems which have been used for a long period of time. Failures and disruption in these systems can lead to great consequences and it is important to test the systems to avoid them. Manual testing requires much resources. To automate the tests are a possibility and our partner in this study, Stora Enso Skog, wanted to look into the possibilities.The purpose of this study is to describe what challenges you meet when automating tests for legacy systems. The purpose is also to describe what factors you need to consider when implementing test automation. To do this we have used a case study and gathered data through interviews and study of documents. The interviews have been conducted with experienced experts within the testing area.Our conclusions shows that there are a number of challenges to consider when automating tests for legacy systems. The challenges include problems trying to automate some sort of tests for legacy systems due to the code being unstructured and not prepared for tests. There’s also a risk of spending too much resources in automating the tests instead of improving the systems.A number of factors to consider when implementing automated tests for legacy systems have also been found. Examples given are that automating tests can never fully compensate for a bad architecture and design. Focus should also be on the most important tests and start automating small parts. Also to improve the possibility to test in legacy systems instead of just adopting the testing tool to the system is to be considered.Finally we have noted that there are different types and levels of legacy systems and because of that challenges and factors to consider when automating tests may vary. Many challenges and factors presented in this study also applies to systems not considered legacy.