ProdPerfect Inc. said Tuesday it has raised $13 million in new funding to build its automated software testing business.

The company, which was founded in 2017, had previously raised $2.7 million in a seed round.

ProdPerfect uses machine learning to monitor user interactions with an application and create test suites automatically. Its software then continually evolves the test scripts based on real user interactions.

The company is addressing a market that IBISWorld Inc. estimates is worth $4.1 billion in the U.S. alone. It’s one that has stubbornly resisted automation, with many scripts generated manually. A 2018 survey by Dimensional Research found that 44% of the 1,091 information technology professionals who responded said their companies conduct testing either entirely or mostly by manual means.

ProdPerfect deploys a small amount of JavaScript code to monitor real user interactions with software applications and look for common patterns. “Data produces patterns which produce test cases and we can automatically infer the right test cases to build,” said Dan Widing, co-founder and chief executive. “We use a model of exploratory testing and checking until we find the patterns that simulate what you’d see in production.”

The result is a test suite that closely matches the way software is used rather than how developers think it should be used, Widing said. The objective is to test “not everything but only the right things.”

The company spends about two weeks gathering usage data to “get a clear understanding of the application and its usage,” Widing said. Generating an initial test script requires about an hour of monitoring time and the process is repeated roughly every four hours thereafter.

“The payoff is more stable applications, being able to develop and ship faster and not investing as many resources into development,” he said. Software engineers are also freed from the often laborious task of create test scripts. Widing estimated that companies employing agile development methodologies can cut overall development time by 30% using ProdPerfect’s software.

The Series A funding was led by Anthos Capital LP with participation by Fika Ventures, Eniac Ventures Management LLC, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, and Acrew Capital. Widing said the funds would be used primarily to build out marketing and sales as well as product development.

Image: Markus Spiske/Pixabay