Challenges of Automated Testing in Agile Environment

A constant increase is noted in the number of organizations adopting agile methodologies. But each organization faces several challenges while testing a software application in agile environment. As many reports have highlighted the traditional test management and automation tools are not flexible enough to complement a faster moving development environment.

While testing complex projects in agile environment, the QA professional also have to address issues related to the resources, different geographic locations of teams and development technologies. That is why; it is essential for each organization to understand and address the challenges to optimize automated testing in agile environment.

4 Common Challenges of Test Automation in Agile Environment

1) Picking the Right Test Automation Tools
Nowadays, an enterprise has option to choose from several commercial and open source test automation tools. Most organizations compare these tools based on their individual features and prices. But often enterprises fail to identify the hidden flaws in a tool like inadequate support for the application, and lack of reliability.

An organization has to consider several factors to choose the right test automation tools for a specific project. Along with reading the features and price of the commercial tool, the user must analyze the feedback and recommendation of other users who have already use the tool in agile environment. Likewise, he must opt for the open source test automation tools that are supported by a large and active community.

2) When to Begin Test Automation Development
While developing in agile environment, organizations often start test automation development in the early stages of the project. But the features and functionalities of complex software applications keeps changing till the end of iteration. So the testers have to modify and redevelop the test automation scripts to optimize the unit test, performance test and API test results.

The quality assurance (QA) team can always save their time and effort by creating detailed and comprehensive manual test cases. The manual cases will make it easier for the testers to automate the tests, while addressing the modifications efficiently. However, an organization can still get the test automation scripts early, when it is sure that the tests will not be affected by current iterations.

3) Including Relevant Test Automation Framework Development Tasks
The conventional agile workflow does not encourage testers to include test automation framework development tasks with no user points. But the automated testing results in agile environment are affected by the choice of test automation tools and frameworks. So a business must not underestimate the need for these frameworks.

As most organizations invest a substantial amount in tools, they get the framework developed by test automation engineers. So they have to decide the amount of time required to build a custom test automation framework. Normally, the framework development will require about two weeks time that equals the normal agile iteration. The product, however, needs to be tested manually during the period. Once the custom framework is developed, it can be easily included in the agile development environment.

4) Test Case Selection
In agile environment, QA professionals often find it daunting to choose the test cases for automation. Many organizations even affect the software testing results adversely by automating all test cases. But the QA team must choose and automate the right test cases to achieve both quality and efficiency, while saving their time and efforts.

An organization must evaluate each test case in detail to decide if needs to be automated. It is also important to automate the higher priority cases from the very beginning. The automation will help QA professionals to run the test cases with different system configurations, platforms and different sets of data. The proper selection of test cases for automation will further make it easier for the organization to reduce investment in test automation tools and frameworks.

With more and more organizations adopting agile methodologies, it has become essential for testers to understand how to automate the testing process to make the project successful. The software QA professionals must consider implementing best practices to overcome the challenges of automated testing in agile environment.

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

We provide test automation services. If you would like to hire automation testers from us or would just like to speak to one of our expert software testers, please reach out to us at Mindfire Solutions.

Manual vs. Automated Testing - How to Achieve Consistency

Many experts have highlighted how the software QA strategy can be optimized by integrating both manual and automated testing seamlessly. Regardless of the type of software testing, the QA strategy also needs to consider a number of key elements like test plans, test cases, test environment and test automation tools to generate accurate test data that can be used to take important decision. The right QA strategy can further enhance the efficiency and productivity, while getting higher ROI in the longer run. However, the QA strategist must explore innovative ways to maintain consistency in both manual and automated software testing efforts.

Smart Ways to Achieve Consistency in Software Testing

Setup Automated Build Setups

The budgets of small and medium companies do not allow them to invest in commercial test automation tools. So these organizations often build, stage and deploy the codes manually. Further, the QA engineers have to put both time and effort to perform certain repetitive activities like running tests, tagging new versions and taking backup of old versions. However, an organization can always consider setting up customized automated build solutions without investing any additional funds. It also has option to use several open source software testing tools that can be used to easily setup the basic automated build solutions to achieve consistency in QA without incurring any additional expenses.

Manage Product Backlog
As the product grows large, the volume of product backlog also grows at a rapid pace. During the development cycles, the enhancements and bugs further add to the backlog. So each organization must emphasize of managing the backlog properly to achieve consistency in software QA. In addition to each product manager focusing on the changes, the team of QA engineers must modify the test strategy and roadmaps to deliver accurate test data. It is always important to evaluate and filer the product backlog constantly to decide the cases that need immediate focus. There are also chances that the QA strategy needs to be modified regularly to reduce the growing product backlog.

Adopt Agile QA Methods
An organization can avail several advantages by adopting Agile approach of software development and QA. Along with addressing the enhancements throughout the development cycle, the Agile testing methods further collaborate and coordinate the test efforts efficiently. So it becomes easier for the team of QA engineers to manage the product backlog. They can evaluate the significance of a QA issue according to the expected goals, and thus can easily process the product backlogs. As all issues cannot be measured quantitatively, the QA team can decide the most appropriate way to evaluate the issue. The qualitative aspects of the QA can easily be evaluated and processes to achieve the primary goal, while maintaining consistency.

Perform Requirement Reviews
To maintain consistency in software QA the testers need to ensure that each requirement is testable. The team can further put both time and effort to consistently perform requirement reviews. Based on quality and verifiability of the results, a testing professional can decide of a specific requirement is testable. The testability of a requirement can also be measured based on a calculation, form or database value. These elements can also be used to verify several results based on a particular requirement. However, the QA engineer must emphasize of certain key elements like what, when, how, where and why. At the same time, he also needs to review the logic or functional workflow to find the gaps or missing connections.

A number of reports have highlighted how an organization can achieve consistency by automating its software QA efforts. But the test automation strategy of the organization must concentrate on these points to deliver reliable results along with achieving the preset objectives. Application software testing experts can be the primary driver who can help you accomplish testing within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide automation testing services. If you would like to hire certified automation testers from us, we would be glad to assist you at Mindfire Solutions.

7 Main Practices Of Test Automation In The Agile World

Test Automation – What is it?
Test Automation can be referred to as the use of a specific software for controlling evaluation of a particular software (different from the one that is used in testing) as well as comparing its real life outcomes with the hypothetical ones predicted by the developers of the software. It is all about automating certain repetitive yet highly essential tasks with the help of a specifically formalized testing mechanism that is already pre-set or pre determined and adding certain additional testing mechanisms that are hard to carry out manually.

Now when we talk about automatic test, it provides a lot of benefits to the developers which include detecting bugs as well as errors, reduction of expenses of failure, reduction of time by repeatability and early verification, improvement of resource productivity and so on. However, in order to make sure that the best results can be derived through the process of test automation, it is imperative to follow certain tried as well as tested practices. You will find many but here are seven of them that are considered as golden rules or practices of automatic test.

1. Consideration of Costs and Assets
This is one of the most critical as well as important factors that needs to be taken into account during test automation, especially when it comes to testing automation for mobile devices. The cost factor needs to be taken into consideration at the time of deciding whether a particular company should put automation into use or stick to the traditional manual evaluation of various projects that are being developed. However, when we speak about the cost factor, that should be evaluated along with certain other parameters like time taken, number of heads needed, infrastructure, tools as well as training procedures involved therein.

2. Test Coverage and Re-usability
This is another factor that needs to be considered as well as maintained in a thorough manner as automated testing helps in increasing the depth as well as the scope of tests. Besides, test coverage and re-usability also help improving the quality of the software in a significant way. Processes that are lengthy are at times avoided when conducting manual testing. However, when it comes to automatic tests, they can be conducted without any hiccup whatsoever. That is the reason, one needs to make sure that all these aspects are covered during automatic testing. Hence, it is almost a thumb rule to make sure that as many complex test cases covering as many parameters as possible need to be conducted repetitively to ensure creation of new test cases along with building up features that are more compelling.

3. Using the right tools, methods and technology
In order to yield the best results, one should ensure that the toughest as well as cross platform method of testing is opted. This will not only ensure optimal test coverage but will also guarantee on time results. Again the most appropriate tools should be selected to ensure that all the required parameters are aptly covered and evaluated. Besides, this also guarantees that all the requirements as well as parameters are validated properly.

4. Testing Early as well as Frequently
This is one of the most tried and tested golden rule in automatic test. In order to yield the best results, you need to start the test at the earliest. Again, it is imperative that you conduct the test as frequently as possible. It is an almost established fact that the more you subject a particular software to test, debugging becomes easier. The most remarkable advantage of early testing is that in majority of the cases, bugs that are detected early are easier to be fixed and eliminated than those found during the production or installation of the software.

5. Opt for automated tests which are immune to UI changes
Automated tests that are created with the help of certain scripts as well as keyword tests generally depend upon the application that needs to be tested. While the UI of the particular application can undergo changes, more so during the initial stages thereby affecting the results, there may be times when the automated tests might not work with the higher versions of the particular application. Hence it is imperative to opt for those types of tests which will be immune to these changes in the User Interface.

6. Deciding upon the cases that need to be automated
Though classically speaking all the test cases need to be automated, in reality it is almost impossible to do so. Hence, before you commence you need to decide on the particular cases that need to be subjected to automatic tests.

7. Division of automated testing efforts
As automatic testing encompasses various parameters it is highly important that various QA engineers of different disciplines having a sizeable experience and skills under their belts are engaged in the testing to yield the best results.

There are a lot of other systems that need to be covered while going for automated testing. However, those mentioned are thumb rules that are always religiously maintained to ensure that the tests yield the best results and within the quickest possible time.

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

We provide automation testing services. If you would like to hire certified automation testers from us, we would be glad to assist you at Mindfire Solutions.