Is Automation Testing Working for You?

The right test automation strategy will enable your organization to avail several advantages. In addition to optimizing quality and productivity, the strategy will further cut down the product release time and cost. However, the QA managers must implement the strategy properly to achieve a set of preset goals. At the same time, you need to monitor the test automation process and test results constantly to ensure that strategy is working effectively for your organization.

Six Ways to Make Automation Testing Work for You

1) Evaluate Scope of Automation Testing

You must remember that automation testing fails due to lack of a comprehensive testing plan. In addition to deciding the objectives, you also need to define a clear roadmap to achieve these preset goals. Based on the roadmap, you can decide the manpower, tools and resources required to achieve the objectives. The effectiveness of the test automation plan must be evaluated constantly to determine how far you are from the goals. The evaluation will help you in deciding the changes required to make the process smooth and focused.

2) Identify the Test Cases that can’t be Automated
Often enterprises decide to automate all testing efforts with the intention to get the best out of QA engineers and test automation tools. But you must remember that test automation fails when an organization tries to automate the test cases that are no automatable. The test case must complement the test automation tools. Further a test case can be automated only when accurate and static data are available without requiring manual interaction. So you must evaluate each test case in detail before deciding if it is automatable or not.

3) Check the Test Automation Tools
It is always important to evaluate the pros and cons of various test automation tools before picking those that guarantees success. But you must stay tuned to the latest trends in software automation testing tools and frameworks, while checking the effectiveness of tools selected by you. The new or latest versions of test automation tools come with several additional features and functionality. Therefore, you can always consider replacing or updating these tools to achieve better results.

4) Encourage QA Engineers to Acquire Additional Skills
Like programmers and code writers, QA engineers are also inquisitive in nature. These professionals frequently explore options to acquire new skills. You must encourage the testers to learn how to write code. The coding knowledge will help them in writing better automated test scripts. At the same time, they will also be able to think like code writers, while working with the development team without any hassle. When the QA engineers acquire additional skills, they will achieve the preset goals on schedule.

5) Concentrate on Maintaining the Test Scripts
You can always deploy experienced automated testing professionals to start writing test scripts immediately. But there are always chances that the test scripts will not help you exclusively in achieving your goals. Along with finishing the test scripts on schedule, you must explore ways to maintain these properly. The test script can be maintained easily when it is reusable, standardized and well documented, along with being easy to incorporate changes. The standardization will help junior QA engineers in understanding the requirements, while the senior testers can concentrate on writing and maintaining more complex test scripts.

6) Don’t Keep Manual and Automation Test Engineers Apart:
In comparison to manual testing, automated testing is effective in rapidly covering a great amount of functionality. The automation tools can also be used to verify the functionalities that have not changed. On the other hand, manual testing is essential to verify the new and changed functionality. Further, there are certain functionalities that can be tested only by deploying skilled manual testers. That is why; seamless amalgamation of manual and automated testing efforts is essential to achieve your goals. Both automation and manual test engineers must work together as a single team to enhance both productivity and efficiency.

You can further review and modify the test automation plan periodically to get good quality and high productivity. The functioning of the test automation tools and framework must be monitored and evaluated constantly to make the process more efficient by using the latest software testing suites. When you work with companies certified in providing test automation services, you get all this and more.

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Automating Your Mobile App Testing - A Test Driven Development Approach

An enterprise can avail several advantages by automating its software testing. Along with beating competition by launching the application early, the customized test automation tools will further optimize its performance by identifying all bugs, errors and flaws. But each organization must consider some additional points to effectuate its test automation strategy. The software testing strategy can be further optimized by adopting test driven development approach.

Under test driven development approach, the automated test cases are written before the coding starts. The test case clearly defines the improvements and new functionality required, while producing the basic code required for passing the test. Based on the initial test results, the new code is refactored to meet the acceptable standards. If you are planning to make a comprehensive automated testing strategy for your project, it is time to understand why you must try test driven development (TDD) approach.

Top 5 Advantages of Test Driven Development Approach

1) Easy to Check Individual Logics
Under this approach, testing is integrated from the granular levels of the software development process. So it becomes easier to check individual and standalone pieces of logic regardless of frequent modifications. As the application needs to be tested thoroughly once the development process is over, loads of new and modified test cases needs to be run to ensure that the application is running flawlessly. The new approach makes it easier to update the legacy applications by incorporating changes in the current software development process. That is why; the TDD approach can be adopted by both young and old organizations to achieve different objectives.

2) Better Options to Streamline Codebase
As automated test cases are written before the coding starts, it becomes easier for an enterprise to get enhanced test coverage without any hassle. The initial refactoring process further helps programmers to write as well as streamline the code base. Also, it becomes easier for developers to maintain the code base without putting any extra effort. They can avoid writing any additional code if test case is not written or use-case is not available for a specific functionality.

3) Create a Clean Interface
Under conventional testing approach, the programmers write code by focusing mainly on the internal working of the application. So they often ignore to check the code from an API-user perspective. But the TDD approach emphasizes on the test case to be written first. So the APIs generated based on these predefined cases are written from the prospective of an API-user. These techniques also result in building an interface that is both clean and economical.

4) Smooth Incorporation of Changes and New Functionalities
The TDD approach prevents the codebase from becoming dated and monolithic through the refactoring process. The process further makes it easier for developers to optimize and strengthen the code base by incorporating changes. As the process is flexible, the programmers can include new functionalities and features by changing the entire architecture of the application. At the same time, they can make the code more efficient by frequently incorporating fresh and innovative ideas without any hassle.

5) Embrace New Technology without Any Hassle
The TDD approach requires the use-cases to be written as test-cases. So the programmers and code writers can observe the test cases to understand the objectives of writing a specific piece of coding. At the same time, unit tests enable developers to adopt and use new technologies by acting as an efficient learning tool. They can simply refer to a small set of predefined unit test, and understand how to address a specific coding bottleneck. Also, the existing codebase can be accessed by new developers to update the application by including new functionalities.

There are always chances that you may have to put some additional time, effort and money to adopt test driven development. But the initial investment will get you higher returns in the long run by delivering rich and flawless user experience.

You can hire automation testers from top software testing companies in India who can help you accomplish testing within allocated budgets and time schedules.

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Poor Practices that Damage Efforts of Test Automation

Every upcoming development methodology places considerable importance on testing, which includes Test-Driven Development, Feature-Driven Development, Behavior Driven Development, etc. Although automating tests has prevailed since long time, a number of development organizations still fail to get it right with the process.

Well, the reason can mostly be owed to the inherent bad practices that have been running across the wide range of testing and development methodologies. Here is a quick look at some of the poor practices and useless habits that has been restricting a number of organizations from gaining the real worth and benefits of automation of several software –

• Avoid assuming that test automation is simple and can be taken up by anyone: Since the tools comprise record-and-playback features, it is believed that anyone familiar with the mouse can run successful automation of tests. A part of such belief can be blamed on the high dependency of the industry on the subject criteria more than the objective criteria of the test automation tool. The matter that the appearance must be made easy in terms of just pointing –and–clicking the way to ROI for easy sale of the test automation to the mass is never stated right. Assuming that you can send anyone for automation-training for developing the required expertise is a bad idea. On the contrary, you must take time and put up a team that understands diverse programming concepts and software development process.

• Record-and-Playback: Did you ever think about what makes record-and –playback so popular in the industry? Well, simply because it helps the team feels productive, even though the team is undergoing a futile exercise. Record-and-playback allows your team to design test scripts that can be thrown away. Even if the script fails to work, there is hardly any reason to worry. All you need to do is re-launch the recorder and start the process all over again. Always remember that if test automation had been that easy, the need of its specialists would have never existed.

• Framework Test and Job Security: Having an expert automation specialist is not always a good idea, as there is a disadvantage for the same. Relying on just one person for designing and maintaining a test framework for a team of testers is never a good idea. If you are in the field of software development, you must be aware of the term “spaghetti code”, which involves a complicated control structure. The concern that comes up is who will be maintaining the framework, in case the specialist goes missing from action. It is important for you to design a simple framework that is well-documented and can be maintained easily. This would save the team from losing out on any expertise of the framework.

• Keyword-Driven Testing: So, it is almost understood that automation-testing is not an easy task to accomplish. Building a library of code related to table based functionalities might help the accounting or the QA team to go ahead with the automating process and that too successfully. If you are considering going ahead with the idea of implementing keyword-driven testing, you must always focus on listing the skill set of your team. This particular method works only when the team is blessed with the technical knowledge of maintaining, enhancing, and executing the framework. However, it is not being said that keyword-driven testing is a bad idea. It is not required for the entire team to be involved in the process.

Test automation of software is never an easy task to take up. Designing efficiencies or building expertise into the process of development is a tough task to achieve. However, doing the same mistake continuously will make this topic remain on the cycle of software development. Avoid looking for an ultimate solution to test automation. On the contrary, consider relying upon a realistic and practical approach of building automation library that is robust and can be reused. It is also important for the automation library to provide good ROI.

In such a scenario, to leverage the maximum benefits of automation testing, scouting for a list of automation testing companies is the most helpful. Once you get a list, it would be helpful to understand their expertise in then find an overlap with your needs.

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