Topics
- Why Automation Testing?
- What is Automation Testing?
- Automation Testing Coverage & Consideration
- Automation Testing Lifecycle
Why Automation Testing?
- When a company develops a product, it is bound to have defects. So, before the release of the product, the company needs to capture the flaws in it to provide a seamless user experience. It is the responsibility of the testing team to perform various kinds of testing, from functional to non-functional, to ensure the effectiveness, efficiency, and better user experience of the overall product.
- Manual software testing is performed by a human sitting in front of a computer carefully going through application screens, trying various usage and input combinations, comparing the results to the expected behavior and recording their observations
- Software tests have to be repeated often during development cycles to ensure quality. Every time source code is modified software tests should be repeated. For each release of the software it may be tested on all supported operating systems and hardware configurations. Manually repeating these tests is costly and time consuming.
- Automation Testing is required to overcome below key challenges of Manual Testing
- Time-Consuming: Limited test resources make manual testing simply too time-consuming. As per a study done, 90% of all IT projects are delivered late due to manual testing.
- Incomplete Coverage: Testing is quite complex when user have a mix of multiple platforms, OS servers, clients, channels, business processes, etc. Full manual regression testing is impossible.ime consuming.
- Higher chance of Risk: In manual testing, there is a higher chance of risk involved of oversight and mistakes. In the testing process, testers may get tired, may not be very attentive as they have too many tasks to be done. Therefore, there will be unexpected errors or mistakes that can happen in entering data, in setting parameters, in execution, and in comparisons.
- Maintaining Project Deadlines: Companies need to maintain the application/product launch deadline. However, if the application is not tested on time, it pushes production go live date. This is not a good sign for the brand image. It is challenging to maintain deadlines because the tester has to check and create test cases for every problem manually. This takes time which can be a major challenge in manual testing when everyone's on a tight schedule.
- Manual Regression Testing: Regression testing is conducted on existing software to ensure that the new changes in the application are not affecting other code and lowering the functionality. However, when software expands after every up-gradation, it becomes enormous to apply manual testing. This makes it impossible to verify new changes, test the previous code's functionality, and track any new defects that might have arisen due to new coding.
What is Automation Testing?
- Automation testing is a Software testing method or technique to test any application and compare the actual result with the expected result. This can be achieved by designing test scripts using any relevant automation testing tool.
- In manual testing test cases are executed manually without any proper support from relevant tools. However, for automated testing, test cases are executed with the assistance of one or more appropriate tools. Automation Testing is also more reliable as there is less chances of human error.
- In manual testing user have to run test cases manually every time based on their need, hence it is time consuming. However, in automation testing once scripts are ready user can run the test cases any number of time with different combination of data with minimal time. The main goal of Automation testing is to increase the test efficiency and develop software value.
- A really strong set of test-suites that are executed repeatedly each time a change is made to the code reduces the risk of issues leaking into the field. Automated tests help in finding bugs early in the software development lifecycle, thereby reducing the risk of delivering faulty software.
- In a constantly changing code base, user have the ability to automatically execute the tests on each commit. User won’t have to continuously carry out manual steps by setting up the environment or remember the steps to execute each test. Everything is done automatically.
- Automated tests carry out the same steps every time, with precision. The results are generally made available to everyone concerned in the least possible amount of time.
- Extensions and tools available for automated testing provide features to measure a number of code quality metrics such as code coverage (i.e. the percentage of code that is actually tested), technical debt, code semantics check etc.
- Automated testing has an upfront cost and they do take the time to develop. The investment will pay off in the long term, in terms of reduced workload, eliminating manual errors, accuracy, and savings on cost and time.
Automation Testing Coverage & Consideration
Automation testing is useful for the below mentioned aspects:
- Functional test suite
- Regression test suite
- Smoke / Sanity test suite
- Build deployment
- End to End Lifecycle Validation Testing
- Test data creation
Perform Automation testing for the below mentioned scenarios of the Software:
- Requirements do not change frequently
- Steady Software with respect to manual testing
- Time crunch/Shortage of time for Testing activities
- Big projects
- Projects which require to test the same functionality often
Key considerations before choosing an automated testing solution:
- What kind of technology is to be automated?
- Can I proceed for open source or for commercially licensed tooling?
- How much training is required for the implementation of test automation?
- Does the tool match user current software testing process?
- Do I prefer in house implementation or do I want to outsource test automation activities?
Automation Testing Lifecycle
- Determination of the scope of test automation: Identifying which of the modules of the application can be automated. Detecting which tests can be automated and also determining how to automate these tests. Considering other key aspects like budgetary and resource allocation, size and the skills of the testing team, among other things.
- Selection of the most appropriate automation testing tool: The budget, of course, becomes a driving factor for the tool selection. There are plenty of open-source tools available in the market apart from paid ones. Here, the required functionality should be balanced with the cost of acquiring the automation tool. In addition, organizations need to assess the familiarity with the usage of the tool, the technologies that are part of the overall project and see if these things gel well with the automation tool being considered.
- Developing the Test Plan, Test Design, and Test Strategy: All manual test cases should be gathered from the test management tool and identifying the test case which needs to be automated. The associated risks, background information, and dependencies between replication and the tool should be mentioned in the test plan. Approval must be sought for the testing strategy from stakeholders or clients. The testing team determines the test standards and guidelines as well as the software and hardware and network system to support the testing environment. It also determines a preliminary testing schedule, the data requirements for the test and error tracking system, an associated tracking tool, and a method to control the configuration and staging environment for the test.
- Setting up the test environment: The testing team needs to track and schedule the test environment, set up and install test environment software as well as link network resources and hardware. The production data needs to be the same as that of the test environment otherwise it becomes a problem when code changes are made in the production environment. Testing should be done across numerous client operating systems. Tests should be done across all browsers and their versions.
- Test scripting and execution: Creating scripts based on the requirements of the project. Using a common method throughout the process. Ensuring scripts are reusable, easy, and structured so that anyone can understand them. Perform proper code review and reporting for better insights and maintain quality throughout the process. Teams should be able to run the scripts in all environments and on various platforms. Bug reports are a must in case of any errors due to functionality.
- Test analysis and reporting: After all the test results are captured, all types of testing are performed, the testing team analyzes and identifies the problematic functionalities. The reports help understand if the team requires any additional procedures and provides information about different errors encountered. A thorough report is prepared and shared with the stakeholders, clients, employees, and teams crucial to the project at this stage.