In recent times, testing has become more sophisticated and more advanced. We have started to utilize test automation to help ease the workload of the rest of the team and provide clear and accurate results. Automated testing will shorten your development cycles, will avoid repetitive tasks and help in improving software quality.
What is Automation Testing?
Automated software testing is the process of automating the manual testing process. A QA engineer writes test scripts and then runs the test scripts either on-demand or schedule them for periodic executions. It helps in reducing the overall testing time, thus helping in faster product releases.
Best Practices to follow in Automation Testing
Following Best practices could help maximizing the test automation output. These best practices a successful starting point for a successful of your software quality.
Identify Test Cases That Can Be Automated
Not all the test cases can be automated and some had to be done in traditional method. You need to segregate your test cases into broad categories such as:
- Test Cases that are always running,
- Test Cases that are run only in certain scenarios,
- Test Cases that touch a key point of functionality.
Identifying such categories and add your test cases into these buckets. If you have access to historical data, the best approach would be to order your test cases by the time taken to run each execution. This will help to identify the test cases that are taking more time. Check 80:20 rule, if 20% of your test cases are taking 80% of your time. Then these become the first candidate for automation.
Start Testing Early and Run Frequent Tests
Start testing in the early sprint development lifecycle, you can get the most out of automation testing and also run tests as often as possible. By testing frequently testers can start detecting bugs as they appear and resolve them immediately. Following these methods will saves much of the time and money that would have to be spent to fix bugs in a later development stage or even in production.
Right tools and frameworks
Selecting the right tool is just the beginning. There is some misconception that by selecting the right tool everything can be easily automated. Infact, automation tools do not automate everything. They make the process easier. But you need skilled resources to complete the process.
Automation Testing tools are buggy and they stuck in identifying complex objects on the application. QA engineers make the automation easier, if only they are skilled, and come up with a workaround which takes the process forward. Otherwise, if you don’t hire good human resources, tool alone cannot guarantee successful automation.
Test on Real devices
Whatever the website maybe, it needs to be tested on real devices and browsers. Remember that some users could be using older OS versions or older mobiles, it is a major concern for every developer and tester. Every website has to work seamlessly on multiple devices and browser and Operating systems. A large variety of devices being used to access the internet globally, every website has to be optimized for different configurations, viewports, and screen resolutions.
All Websites and Mobile Applications need to be tested on real devices so that they can work in real-world circumstances such as a low battery, incoming calls, weak network strength, and so on. Always test on real devices before releasing to the users. When users start using in real world, they would encounter bugs and errors that could have been easily avoided, and disruptive user experiences will result in loss of users.
Remove Uncertainty
Achieving consistent test results is always one of the main reason companies are adopting test automation. When a test fails, the team has to check what and where the problem is. But when the number of false positives or false negative increases, it also increases the time needed for analysis of the test cases. Thus, you have to eliminate unstable test cases residing in regression packs to remove uncertainty.
Sometimes, while performing automated tests it may ignore the most vital verifications because they’re outdated. This kind of situations usually occurs due to lack of planning before implementing automation. Checking test cases are update to date should be kept as a priority task. So, make sure someone is assessing the sanity and validity of automated tests.
Conclusion
Automation testing is an effective way to create high-quality software and reduce time-to-market, also an effective solution that helps to improve QA testing as a whole. Every tool is different from the others it’s important to understand that every testing team and organization has unique requirements and should choose tools accordingly.
However, automation testing tools need human intervention to write test cases, and many types of testing, like exploratory testing, can’t truly be automated at all. So, relying on automation testing tools for every test can misfire the bugs that could have caught in manual testing.
QATTS is a tool that makes test automation a lot easier than any other tools, as it is something that’s been designed with the test performers in mind.
