Implementation of Automated Testing in Udviklings- og Forenklingsstyrelsen (UFST)

Over a period of nine months, TestHuset supported The Danish Ministry of Taxation in building an automated solution for handling their manually documented regression tests using the Playwright automation framework.

The Danish Ministry of Taxation is responsible for developing, operating, and maintaining new and existing IT systems for the entire Danish Tax Administration. Facts about the relevant part of the organization at the start of the project:

A dedicated QA team that lends testing resources to development teams
Every three months, a release is conducted where all testing resources are reassigned to the QA team to manually execute End-to-End regression tests
Strong technical foundations for test environments and well-established test data
An increasing need for a scalable and maintainable test automation solution

The specific system within The Danish Ministry of Taxation has been developed over several years and contains extensive and complex functionality, which is manually tested before each release. Following the decommissioning of a previous framework for automating regression tests, The Danish Ministry of Taxation sought to build a new automated solution with the requirement that they would be able to develop and maintain the chosen solution themselves moving forward.

A Structured Approach to Test Automation with Playwright and BDD

When TestHuset takes on tasks like this, we begin by gaining an overview of the customer’s needs and then analyzing whether the prerequisites for test automation are in place. Once these prerequisites are met, we provide a series of recommendations on how the customer can achieve success with test automation in the future.

At The Danish Ministry of Taxation, the initial analysis revealed that they already had a solid and well-functioning setup of test environments and test data. Our task was therefore to help identify the specific tests that needed to be automated.

In close collaboration with various stakeholders at The Danish Ministry of Taxation, we identified the most business-critical areas of the system and then located the existing test cases for these areas. A review of the selected test cases, which proved to be extensive and covered many different acceptance criteria, led the Testhuset team to recommend a Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) approach. This approach involved using Cucumber on top of Playwright.

This solution was chosen to rewrite the identified tests into isolated feature files containing scenarios (written in Gherkin syntax) that describe the expected system behavior. The choice of this solution would also make it easier for The Danish Ministry of Taxation to report on individual functionalities that might fail, while simultaneously enabling them to import the results into their test management tool, XRay. With the technical components and internal development processes in place, the TestHuset team assisted in automating the described feature files.

Increased Efficiency Through a Common Language – Better Collaboration Between IT and Business

Ensuring Core Functionality: Continuous testing of critical systems reduces the risk of operational disruptions and increases stability.
Effective Communication with a Common Language: Improved collaboration between business and IT minimizes errors early in the process and ensures that the system meets business needs.
Potential for More Frequent Deliveries with 300 Automated Tests: 300 daily automated regression tests enable more frequent implementation of changes and can increase delivery speed without compromising quality.
Transparency in Test Results: Integration with the test tool XRay ensures full visibility of test results and faster response to issues.