Robot Framework transformation journey
In this blog text I am talking about the transformation journey of DB Schenker.
What has changed since they took Robot Framework into use?
First some introductions, although if you are not familiar with the giant from the logistic industry, you probably are not from this planet. They operate in the air- , ocean- and land transportation logistics and warehousing with more than 76 thousand employees.
This blog text is based on an interview with Joerg Bruewer who is responsible for the global Solutions Quality team at DB Schenker.
Background
During the past decade, quality and speed of delivery had become even more important in DB Schenkers’s digitalization. Hence, it was decided by the Solution Quality to upskill and empower the professional QA experts.
The IT QA transformation is upskilling the traditional testers to fully integrated QA experts and transforming the Test Management into an integrated Quality Assurance profession. One major pillar of this transformation has been the enablement of the experts on Test Automation.
Today, Robot Framework is used by roughly a hundred employees across different teams and functionalities at DB Schenker. Over 10 000 tests are run everyday across almost all continents. 90% of all automated tests have been replaced by use of the Robot Framework and the provided libraries. It can be said that starting to use Robot Framework has granted substantial benefits for the company. For example, the execution time of some test cases has dropped from 8 to 2 hours.
The Robot Framework journey at DB Schenker
How did it all start? Let’s go back to the year 2017. Waterfall method was mostly used in the projects, testing was usually done at the end of the project development, the testers were scattered and different paid tools were used in different projects. A reform was needed.
Devops, agile and continuous testing was the future.
Different automation tools were explored and 2018 Robot Framework was chosen to be the tool to be used in after the transformation. The immediate benefit of Robot Framework was that it is not just a tool, but a framework. A holistic approach was taken to accommodate Robot Framework to every project.
However, the first usage of Robot Framework was actually already in 2017. There was a need to replace a vendor owned framework by a highly flexible automation framework for a SWING application. The vendor owned test automation set was replaced in one year. Naturally, it was also a good case to practice Robot Framework with large scale enterprise applications and challenging vendor code.
One of the major reasons to tip the scales to choose Robot Framework for DB Schenker was the community. They were impressed. There was a discussion back in 2019 whether to use Selenium or accommodate Playwright into use. A discussion was had in the community and a solution, the browser library was introduced only a few months later by the active community members. Effective, agile and impressive!
The power of the Robot Framework community was revealed. The heart of Robot Framework is its human community. It is quick, smart and effective. The best of the best are doing amazing solutions as the greatest minds from the community come together to define a new way to do things. DB Schenker is still a heavy user of the browser library.
Since 2019 DB Schenker has harmonized almost all projects to run on Robot Framework. The transition has been easy. Moreover, one of the benefits is that even for non technical people it is fairly easy to teach how to read the test results and more than 180 test analysts have been trained to do so.
Currently the next step is brewing inside the company. They are looking for ways to use AI to check the test results and weed out the usual suspects in order to save human work on the review of the results. DB Schenker is an open source advocate and believes in giving back to the community, so we can hope to have the solution open for all community members once finalized.
Closing words
DB Schenker is happy with the free Open Source solution that they have gotten with Robot Framework and they are a member of the Foundation. If you want to know more about Robot Framework or want to join, please contact us!
At DB Schenker the QA Engineers in the Technology Solution Center in Delhi, Nanjing and Warsaw support large scale business critical global applications for Air/Ocean, Domestic transportation and Contract Logistics.
By using Robot Framework as a common solution, they have built up a global expert community that is constantly improving the IT Solution quality, but also exchanging knowledge and experience of Robot Framework and the powerful ecosystem libraries.
An open mindset of sharing and growing has empowered the QA Engineers to fully support DB Schenkers’ growth and the ambitious digitalization roadmap to improve the customer experience.
Yours truly,
Miikka Solmela
Executive Director, Robot Framework Foundation