BPMN orchestrated end-to-end system testing with Robot Framework

The battle between monoliths and microservices aside, in real life, even monolithic systems rarely operate in isolation; they run integrated with an ever-growing number of internal and external systems. Therefore, testing these systems in isolation is not enough. Real system testing requires evaluating the business processes that depend on them. Our hypothesis is that business process automation tools, combined with BPMN 2.0 as a visual and executable modeling standard with features for every special case, could significantly enhance the testing changes for those systems.

With this mindset, Markus Stahl and yours truly, are offering a workshop Orchestrating complex end-to-end test suites with visual BPMN process models on the 12th of February 2025 in Helsinki at RoboCon.io Helsinki 2025. Interested? Register until the end of 2024 with the voucher code END-OF-YEAR-15 for a 15 % discount (profits, if any, would support Robot Framework Foundation).

Why BPMN?

BPMN stands for Business Process Model and Notation. It’s a graphical presentation standard for specifying business processes in business process models. BPMN is grounded in research on workflow patterns and is designed to express any workflow a process requires. Additionally, it provides a mapping between graphical representations and execution, enabling the creation of visually clear models for any automated process. Including test automation!

Even traditional test flows make beautiful diagrams, but the more challenging the flow, the more BPMN excels.

What if test suites take a long time to complete because they are waiting for external services?

What if they take days due to waiting for third parties to complete their tasks?

Or what if test suites require manual feedback or other forms of human interaction to finish?

What about when test flows become very complex due to parallel processes and conditional suites?

Yet, BPMN can make even the most complex test setups look simple and elegant:

Why workshop?

Didn’t understand all the symbols used in the previous diagrams? Don’t worry! If you’re able to attend our workshop at RoboCon 2025 Helsinki, everything should become clear. And if you can’t make it, we’ll do our best to publish all the materials shortly afterward.

But modeling is just the beginning. A powerful open-source BPMN engine may rival traditional CI orchestration tools in many use cases. And it doesn’t have to stop at testing. As many test automation engineers know: if something can be automatically tested in development, it can often be automatically executed in production too.

The same open-source BPMN setup we use in the workshop for test execution can also be applied to more traditional business process and task automation. BPMN-based orchestration doesn’t need to be a secret of the few. Let’s democratize it!

See you in February! At RoboCon 2025 Helsinki.