Automation testing provides more and deeper test coverage, which raises its significance and improves product quality. However, many individuals don’t use automated testing correctly because they don’t have the necessary skills and understanding. This has the potential to cause much more problems than it solves. Before starting up with test automation, you should be aware of a few key points to ensure that employing automated testing on your software product produces better results and boosts overall productivity. Before going further with automated testing, keep the following basic yet useful recommendations in mind.
A software product’s success depends on thorough testing. Most consumers will not purchase or use your program if it does not operate properly…at least not for a long time. However, finding faults or bugs can be time-consuming, costly, repetitious, and prone to human error. Automated testing, in which quality assurance and developing teams utilize software tools to execute thorough, data-intensive, repetitive tests automatically, aids teams in improving software quality and maximizing their testing resources, which are always finite. Test automation technologies enable organizations to test more code in less time, enhance test correctness, and free up QA engineers to concentrate on tasks that need specific human attention and their unique abilities.
Essential things to consider before you start web automation testing
To guarantee that your software testing is effective and that you obtain the best return on investment (ROI), follow these guidelines:
1. Identify The Test Cases To Automate
Because automating all testing is unfeasible, it’s critical to figure out which test cases should you automate first. The worth of automated testing is directly proportional to the number of times a test may be run. Manual testing is preferable for tests that are only conducted a few times. Test cases that are performed often and require a substantial quantity of data in order to execute the same action are ideal candidates for conducting automation. If you automate the following tasks, it will help you get the most out of your automated testing efforts:
- Tests that are repeated for numerous builds.
- Tests that are prone to human mistakes.
- Tests that need the use of numerous data sets.
- This is a frequently utilized feature that presents high-risk situations.
- Tests that are difficult to be completed by hand.
- Tests are performed on numerous hardware and software platforms and combinations.
When performing manual testing, tests that involve a lot of time and effort. Test automation success requires meticulous planning and design effort. Create an automation strategy first. This helps you to select the first series of tests to automate, as well as act as a reference point for subsequent tests. To begin, establish your automated testing objective and decide which sorts of tests that are to be automate. There are many forms of testing, each with its own role to play in the testing process. Unit testing, for example, is used to test a tiny portion of a planned application. GUI or Functional testing is used to test a specific aspect of an application’s user interface.
You should select what actions your test automation efforts will do after identifying your objective and which sorts of tests to automate. Don’t merely make test steps that cover several parts of the app’s behavior at once. It’s tough to change and troubleshoot large, sophisticated automated tests. It’s preferable to break up your tests into smaller, logical chunks. It unifies and manages your testing environment and enables you to share data, test code, and procedures. Simply by adding simple tests that handle new features, you will be able to update your automated tests more often. Instead of waiting until the whole feature is completed, test the functionality of your software or application as you add it.
When writing tests, keep them simple and focused on a single goal. Separate tests for read-only and read/write operations, for example. This enables you to reuse these tests without having to include them in every automated test.
After you’ve created a few small automated tests, you may combine them into a single, bigger automated test. Automated tests may be organized by the application’s functional area, major/minor division, common functionality, or a basic set of test data. You may need to establish a test tree if one automated test references other tests. This allows you to execute tests in a certain sequence.
2. Dividing The Efforts And The Workload
The formulation of various tests is usually dependent on the expertise levels of the QA engineers. It’s critical to determine each team member’s degree of expertise and talents and split automated testing tasks appropriately. Writing automated test scripts, for example, requires a thorough understanding of scripting languages. As a result, you’ll need QA engineers that are familiar with the automated testing tool’s script language to do these duties.
Some individuals of your team may lack experience building automated test scripts. These quality assurance engineers could be better at developing test cases. It’s preferable if an automated testing solution allows you to develop automated tests without needing a deep understanding of scripting languages. A keyword test that is also known as keyword-driven testing, is a set of terms that perform a certain action. You can imitate keystrokes, click buttons, choose call object, menu items, methods as well as properties, and much more using keyword testing. Keyword tests are frequently used as a replacement for automated test scripts. They may be utilized by both technical and non-technical people, and they enable users of all levels to develop strong and resilient automated tests.
3. Picking The Right Automation Testing Tool
In order to automate tests, you must first choose an automated testing tool. There are several automated testing solutions in the market, and therefore, it is critical to choose the one that best meets your overall needs. When choosing an automated testing tool, keep the following considerations in mind:
- Your platforms and technologies will be supported. What operating systems are you testing C#, .Net, and WPF programs on? Will you be testing web applications? Do you need assistance with mobile application testing? Do you work with iOS or Android, or do you have experience with both?
- Testers of various skill levels may benefit from the flexibility. Is keyword testing necessary or can your QA crew build automated test scripts?
- Automated tests are straightforward to design and have a lot of features. Is there a facility for adding checkpoints to validate values, databases, or important functionality of your application? Does the automated testing tool offer both record-and-playback tests and manual test creation?
- Create reusable, maintainable, and change-resistant automated tests for your application’s user interface. Will the automated tests fail if the user interface changes?
Integrate with the environment you already have. Is your tool compatible with your continuous integration and delivery pipeline, such as Azure DevOps or Jenkins? Or even a test management framework like Zephyr? Consider using a system for defect-management or a source control system. Testing business apps is possible. Is your tool ready to test packaged apps like SAP, Salesforce, Workday, and Oracle right out of the box?
4. Creating Test Data
For data-driven testing, good test data is essential. During an automated test, the data that needs to be loaded into input fields is normally saved in an external file. This information may come from a database or from other sources such as text or Excel sheets, XML files, or database tables. In an automated test, a competent automated testing program really recognizes the contents of data files and converges over them. Using external data allows you to maintain and reuse your automated tests. The data files may be simply upgraded with fresh data to provide alternative testing situations without any need to change the automated test itself.
Typically, test data is manually created and then saved to the specified data storage location. Some platforms, on the other hand, supplies you with the Data Generator, which helps you create Table variables as well as Excel files to store test data. This method allows you to produce data of any kind (integer numbers, texts, boolean values, and so on) and store it to the given variable or file automatically. This feature cuts down on the time it takes to prepare test data for data-driven testing.
Although preparing test data for automated tests is tedious, you should devote time and effort to create well-structured data. Writing the test automation becomes much simpler when adequate test data is available. The sooner you start collecting high-quality data, the simpler it will be to augment current automated tests as the program evolves.
5. Consider using the BBD framework
A software development methodology, BBD entails implementing software according to its behavior. BDD may be used for a variety of testing scenarios, component testing, including unit tests, integration testing, and many more. UI testing is one of the most popular areas where BDD may be used successfully. BDD is suggested for UI Automation and for numerous reasons.
To begin with, BDD is a technique that aids in team understanding and cooperation both outside and within the team. By using BDD to write your tests, you can also develop specs that will assist your team better understand the tests and requirements. This implies that, in addition to developing your tests, you’re also documenting them. This guarantees that you don’t waste other team members’ time as well as your own time, since you don’t need to explain and assist with such tests if they are confusing.
Second, BDD aids the understanding of these tests by the business side (e.g., testers and project managers). This adds to the value of testing since they can offer suggestions based on the advantages to the company.
Third, BDD normally requires you to adhere to a rigid code organization structure, which helps you avoid duplicating code. This is accomplished by using different components known as steps or actions as the test’s building elements.
Before you start automating your testing, make sure you’ve determined out what kind of outcomes you’re hoping to get. Also, make sure that both the testers and the developers are aware of the deployment effort. You can use platforms like LambdaTest that offer cross-browser testing on 3000+ browsers and operating systems online. Automation testing may be quite valuable to your company, but make sure you understand how to use it and how to apply it correctly.
Santosh Kumar is a Professional SEO and Blogger, With the help of this blog he is trying to share top 10 lists, facts, entertainment news from India and all around the world.