Test what matters most with the new Tosca and SeaLights integration

Introduction: The hidden cost of “testing everything”

In the race to deliver software faster, QA teams often face an impossible trade-off: run exhaustive test runs to mitigate risk or cut corners to meet deadlines. The hard truth: Neither option is sustainable. Running every possible test wastes time and resources and skipping tests without considering their relevance and business risk introduces defects that could harm your business. The root cause of the problem? Most testing tools miss the context that makes results relevant. They don’t know which tests matter most for a given code change, so they default to running all of them.

Tricentis’ new integration between Tricentis Tosca and Tricentis SeaLights changes that. By leveraging code change analysis, SeaLights intelligently pinpoints which tests need to run based on recent changes, ensuring optimal coverage without the bloat.

For teams already using Tosca, this integration is a force multiplier. For those evaluating modern testing strategies, it’s proof that intelligent test execution isn’t a futuristic idea. Whether you use Tosca on-prem or in the cloud, intelligent code change analysis is ready for you today.

The testing dilemma: More tests ≠ better quality

Traditional test automation follows a brute-force approach: the broader the test suite, the safer the release. But this mindset creates three critical challenges:

1. Redundant execution: Teams spend hours running tests that haven’t been impacted by recent code changes. Without impact analysis, a QA tester may run thousands of irrelevant tests, slowing down CI/CD pipelines and burying critical failures in noise. To make things worse, the pressure only grows when deadlines are tight.
2. Coverage illusions: Even with thousands of tests, gaps persist. Lack of visibility leaves teams thinking they’re safe – until a defect sneaks into production. The Consortium for Information and Software Quality (CISQ) estimates that software defects cost U.S. organizations over $2 trillion annually in lost productivity, downtime, and reputational damage. These consequences will only become more severe as development cycles speed up and undetected coding errors become more common.
3. Manual triage overhead: QA engineers waste time manually selecting tests or investigating failures in areas that haven’t even changed. This friction delays feedback and erodes trust in the testing process.

SeaLights solves these issues by correlating test cases with code changes in real time. Instead of treating all tests equally, it answers a simple but powerful question:

“What’s the minimum set of tests we need to run to validate this specific change?”

From blind spots to risk-based targeting of test cases

At its core, the Tosca-SeaLights integration works by mapping test cases to code modifications. By combining Tosca’s risk-based testing approach with SeaLights’ intelligent test targeting, teams gain a powerful advantage: confidence that every release is both safe and ready for production. Here’s how it plays out in practice:

When a developer submits a pull request, for example, fixing a checkout bug in an e-commerce app, SeaLights analyzes the changed files, methods, and dependencies. It then cross-references this data with Tosca’s test case portfolio to identify:

• Directly impacted tests: Those that interact with the modified code (e.g., a test validating the checkout API).
• Indirectly impacted tests: Those that depend on downstream systems affected by the change (e.g., inventory updates triggered by a purchase).
• Untested code paths: Areas modified in the commit that aren’t covered by existing tests, flagged for immediate attention.

Tosca zeroes in on what matters, running only impacted tests and skipping the rest. For example:

• A back-end team updates a payment processing service. Instead of running hundreds of end-to-end tests, Tosca-SeaLights identifies and executes just the tests that interact with the payment module, dramatically reducing execution time.
• A front-end team refactors a React component. The integration detects that only a small subset of UI and API contract tests need to rerun, avoiding a full regression cycle.

Speed matters, but this isn’t just about speed. It’s a question of confidence. By focusing on what’s changed, teams can:

• Release faster without sacrificing quality.
• Reduce flakiness by eliminating tests that are prone to false positives in unchanged areas.
• Justify test scope to stakeholders with data based on code changes, not guesswork.

Closing the test gap: No more, “We thought it was covered!”

One of the most dangerous assumptions in QA is that a green test suite equals a risk-free release. But what if critical code paths were never tested in the first place? SeaLights’ test gap identification exposes these blind spots by:

• Highlighting untested methods in modified files, with line-level granularity.
• Prioritizing gaps by risk, using factors like code complexity, historical defect density, and business impact (e.g., a change in a payment processor vs. a cosmetic UI tweak).

For example, consider a financial services team deploying a new fraud detection algorithm. Without SeaLights, they might assume their existing regression suite covers the change. But the integration reveals untested edge cases, such as cross-border transactions, allowing the team to add targeted tests based on code-change analysis before production.

Seamless workflow: No major changes required

The integration is designed to fit into existing processes, not disrupt them. For Tosca users, this means:

• The integration works natively with Tosca Commander and Cloud Commander, requiring only a connection to SeaLights. No test case rewrites needed.
• Test results and coverage data are visible alongside Tosca’s execution reports.

Want to learn more?

To hear more about this powerful integration, watch our webinar Tosca integrates with SeaLights to streamline testing in the age of AI. To see Tosca in action today, request a demo.