How to Speed Up Your Tests With Parallelization

Intro

Compared to Unit and Integration Tests, Selenium is slow. A single test can easily take minutes to run. And when you have a lot of them, it can quickly compound your suite to take hours to complete (just for a single browser) -- hampering your ability to get fast feedback.

A Solution

Rather than run your tests in series (which is what you get out of the box with Selenium) you can dramatically speed things up by running them in parallel. Couple this with the ability to run your tests in any browser, and you're on to some solid footing with your test automation.

But keep in mind that doing this requires some consideration into how you structure your tests, but the pay off is well worth the effort.

About The Author

Dave Haeffner is the original writer of Elemental Selenium -- a free, once weekly Selenium tip newsletter that's read by thousands of testing professionals. He also created and maintains the-internet (an open-source web app that's perfect for writing automated tests against).

Dave has helped numerous companies successfully implement automated acceptance testing; including The Motley Fool, ManTech International, Sittercity, and Animoto. He is also an active member of the Selenium project and has spoken at numerous conferences and meetups around the world about automated acceptance testing.