Test automation: Are you taking a holistic approach

In an increasingly agile world, test automation aids in improving feature velocity and reducing the duration of release cycles. 

Test automation is a technique to automate predefined repetitive testing tasks, using various test automation tools and testing scripts. 

Test automation is the key to continuous testing and has marked benefits in terms of accuracy, scalability, dependability, enhanced test coverage, time and efforts saving.

Pros and cons of test automation

Besides, the well-known benefits attached with test automation, let us list down what extra it has to offer to the teams and the customers, without losing the focus on what can be done to improve the automation process.

In order to reap maximum benefits from test automation, we need to address the issues that have been setting roadblocks in achieving success.

Initial setup issues – time consuming and expensive

Automation is not some magic. It involves careful analysis, design and development of a framework, keeping in mind licensing, development and operational costs. It is no mean feat getting all the stakeholders on the same page, to see the long term benefits of test automation vis-à-vis the initial setup cost.

Talent acquisition – finding the right talent

QA team should be well equipped with the necessary technical skills to design and maintain the test framework. It is a time consuming exercise to acquire the right skill set or train the existing team. But once done, it adds significant value in terms of designing and test execution.

Keeping the tests up to date – outdated data scripts

Keeping the test case repository up to date is a herculean task, especially for large scale projects. For every change in functionality, the related test cases need to be updated. Any change in the test environment or third party tools leads to modification of test cases, to reflect any environmental or configuration impact. Identifying the affected test cases, modifying and verifying them again is a complex and error prone process.

Time intensive exercise – Automating correctly

Identifying, automating and then executing the right test cases for a test cycle is an important step of test planning. However, it is often overlooked and as a result testing turns into a time intensive process.  and it then takes hours to execute the whole test suite. 

Also, the regression cycles have to be effective and optimized, especially when there are changes in test cases.

Triaging through false positives

False positives are one of the major challenges in automation testing, especially with higher release frequencies with agile and CI/CD. It undermines the value of automation and introduces a tremendous amount of effort to triage the failures. The effort and time lost in segregating the false positives from real results is taxing on the whole process. For more details, read our article “The bane of automation – false failures”.

Finding the right automation tools

Identifying the right tool for automation is a challenging task. It has to be a customizable multifaceted tool which covers all possible aspects of testing, and of course, is pocket friendly. There are many commercially available tools in the market. But which one ticks all the boxes?

What is the need of the hour in an increasing Agile CI/CD world?

As evident from the previous section, a comprehensive tool and a well-trained team of professionals is needed if automation has to be a winner all the way.
Besides, the regular features as any other tool, an ideal testing tool should have following:

Quick Automation Setup:

Time taken in test automation setup is critical, since a lot rides on that. Faster time to market and improved feature velocity is the need of the hour. Finding the right tool for test automation is a critical decision because saving time at every single step matters at the end of the day.Webomates uses Selenium and Appium framework that can work across any GUI, mobile or API application. The whole setup can be done within a matter of weeks.

Managing regression testing:

An effective regression testing takes into account all the changes due to bug fixes or introduction of a new feature. Besides modifying and executing the affected test cases, there has to be a service level guarantee that all possible scenarios have been covered. Cherry on the top will be if the time and cost are not affected much. Choice of a tool which automates regression testing can either make or break your system. So, choose wisely.

We provide regression testing of 24 hours for FULL services, 8 hours of Overnight services and quick Smoke regression which gets completed within 15 minutes to maximum 1 hour. Our test model ensures that all the relevant test cases are self-healed and retested, to reflect any changes in the build release and provide a True Pass and True Failure report.

Handling false positives:

As stated above, false positives are annoying and time consuming hurdles in test automation. Identifying susceptible areas is one approach towards isolating test cases which may report false positives. But going through them manually is a time intensive exercise.

Webomates’ AI defect predictor ensures that no false positives are reported, thus saves precious man hours that are spent in triaging the defects.If this has piqued your interest regarding Webomates’ CQ service and you want to know more, then please click here and schedule a demo, or reach out to us at info@webomates.com

Tags: Automation Testing, Continous Testing, Regression Testing