Occasionally we at Test Case Central are engaged by a customer to help them set up their initial test projects or in many cases, even build out the initial framework.
It never ceases to amaze me how many customers have little to no automation or reporting in their testing process. Many customers use bug tracking systems backed by manual testing. It is not uncommon for customers to have unit tests kicked-off automatically from their continuous integration platform, with manual smoke testing provided at the system level, but true system level testing across the entire platform is usually minimal or missing entirely. Even when they do have some form of system level tests they are typically run manually and in many cases these tests amount to little more than a collection of shell scripts or Selenium tests.
One way Test Case Central can help automate these kinds of existing test systems may be thought of as 'shell scripts in the sky'. In most cases these existing scripts may simply be uploaded into Test Case Central and easily integrated into the existing continuous integration process. Once this has been done they will automatically run (often right after unit tests) and start producing results which may now be reported on in a consistent manner.
Obviously, this would be the minimal effort required to integrate system level testing and more advanced scenarios and reporting would be recommended, but this simplistic example shows how little effort is required to get started with an automated system level regression testing solution.
Fortunately, with the advent of APIs, Micro Services and mobile applications customers are increasingly becoming aware of the problems arising from the lack of multi-modal testing and they are starting to address the issues head-on; often with an automation platform like Test Case Central.
Ken