Looking for bugs is one of the single most time-consuming and tedious parts of software development. Testim.io Inc., a San Francisco-based startup, today announced that it has picked up a $5.6 million funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners to alleviate the chore.

Testim.io offers three products designed to streamline quality assurance. The most notable is Automate, which the startup has built to speed up the creation of the custom scripts that development teams use to test their software.  

Putting together an automated workflow to simulate how users interact with an application is much faster than manually trying out all the different use scenarios. However, writing scripts can still be a major time sink when it comes to large software projects with a lot of components. Automate provides a visual dashboard for carrying out the task that eliminates many of the individual chores which have historically bogged down developers.

One of the main highlights is a “recording” feature that makes it possible to create a testing workflow by manually performing the desired series of actions in an application’s interface. Developers can also code their scripts the old-fashioned way if they so choose. From there, visual controls provide the ability to easily fine-tune tests and reuse components.

The work doesn’t end after the initial script is created, however. Applications change over time, which requires updating tests for every major release. Testim.io has equipped Automate with a machine learning mechanism that can take over the task of performing these adjustments and thus free up developers to focus on other activities.

The tool’s features are complemented by the two other products that the startup offers. The first is called Run and can help developers execute the test workflows they create in Automate. The other, Capture, is designed to ease the creation of bug reports.

Testim.io claims that its software can not only speed up quality assurance but also make the process more consistent. The startup’s value proposition has helped it land several big-name customers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., data center storage giant NetApp Inc. and Wix.com Ltd.

Image: Testim.io