The ElasTest Platform: Supporting Automation of End-to-End Testing of Large Complex Applications November 2018 A white paper by the ElasTest team Authors: Francisco Gortázar, Micael Gallego, Malena Donato, Enric Pages, Andy Edmonds, Guiomar Tuñón, Antonia Bertolino, Guglielmo De Angelis, Anton Cervantes, Thomas Michael Bohnert, Alexander Willner, Varun Gowtham. 1. ElasTest End-to-End Testing Quality and high speed is the new mantra: everyone wants the best products delivered as fast as possible. On the one side, managers aim at “the fastest time to market”; on the opposite side, the cliché recurs that “a good user experience is the key to a successful product ”. Compounding both sides, developers know well that before they can release their software, testing is a must. Notwithstanding, it is often ignored or given low priority, why? Are the integrated systems tested enough at their ends to meet the user-demanded functionalities? Software code is written, transformed, and updated, then it is checked-in and verified before a new product is finally launched. But not always this translates into the best software solution or the best experience for users. Is it all about continuous integration process or are there more reasons? With the increasing need of distributed and more interconnected software systems, are developers ready to satisfy this demand? To answer these and even more questions (continue reading for a longer, and yet incomplete, list of difficult questions faced by testers and developers of distributed systems), a diverse group of researchers and industry practitioners, with a common vision, have been participating for the past year and a half in the ElasTest project. This white paper provides an overview of the project and its goals, while providing answers to industrial and research challenges. 2. The Challenge of Large Scale Distributed System Testing Many current software engineering practices are pushing towards building systems in a distributed manner thanks to new easily available capabilities such as microservices, cloud- native applications, big data applications, edge computing. The demand for larger and more