Hybrid Testing

A couple of weeks ago we started to use hybrid tests for the plugin of an app I am testing. The automation we did was for the insurance-based plug-in which sells contracts online.
This product is very question intense. In total around 50 questions.
Around 30 questions a user needs to answer to get a price-comparison. To close a contact the user may needs to answer another 20 questions.
We needed a solution which skips the first 30 questions.

Problems
A huge amount of questions needs to be answered before the user has his final contract.
More than half of the questions already got intense testing and shouldn’t get tested double, since the tests already take a vast amount of time until they reach the comparison result.
Long run times due to several plugins. The navigation to the final plug-in can already take 1 min. inclusive log-in.

Solution
The idea came up to jump in at a particular position of the product but this may break up the testing pyramid.
While we were doing research, we discovered hybrid testing and choose to follow it.
To do this we use API-test to create a result, which allows us to skip the first 30 questions and go straight to the comparison.
From there we start our UI -Test for the next 20 questions until the final contract.

Technical
We use prefilled JSON’s to create the API request. For some of the fields, we use variables which can be edited. For instance this is very handy for date fields especially when the supposed the be in the near future.
The JSON gets send via a post request, which also the frontend uses.
This way we create a result.

Benefits
We save 4-5 minutes for each test case, by skipping the first 30 questions.
We test part of the API as well.
This approach even suits more the way a real user uses the app. Since the users also use features of the app to fill out the questions in two sessions.