Automation testing
With the increase in the demand for fast and quality-driven releases of the application in the market, testing plays a crucial part in ensuring the above. However, to meet the demand of the competitive market, manual testing does not serve its purpose.
This is the reason why automation testing has gained a buzzword in the IT sector all over the world. With the best practice of automation testing, the process has become more sophisticated and advanced to ease the workload of the rest of the team with the delivery of accurate results.
In this present, best practices of automation testing for 2023 will be discussed explicitly, which will help to gain more insight and ways to ease the product development cycle.
Here, we will start with automation testing
Introduction to automation testing
Automation testing came into the picture when testing an application became a challenge, evident by filling multiple input fields manually. This causes testers to be worn out and causes a miss out of errors and bugs.
Automation testing is the approach for testing applications and software products with the help of special tools and platforms to lower human effort and error and enhance quality.
In simple words, automation testing makes it possible to run the test for the application to find a bug with the intervention of humans. Traditionally, a manual test involves an examination of several steps to check whether things are behaving as expected. However, automation testing is created once and can be run whenever needed.
Need for automation testing
Tests like functional or regression testing can be executed manually; however, it has the greater advantage of doing it automatically. Some of the reasons for using automation testing are as follows:
- It improves scale: It transforms the scale through which the test team operates because tests can be run 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
- Reporting ability: Automation testing makes use of crafted test cases for different scenarios. Such scripted sequences provide comprehensive reports, which won’t be possible manually.
- Quick bug detection. Automation testing helps detect bugs easily by making the process easy as it can evaluate the wider test coverage.
- Quick delivery: Software developers have the pressure to release new features, and bugs can wipe out gains in seconds. With automation testing, regression testing is done quickly.
- Releases streamlined: With automation testing, the application can be re-tested during development. For example, whenever a new code is pushed, a smoke test can be run. Thus, the release process becomes efficient and streamlined.
- Frequent testing: Automation testing allows repeated testing where the same test can be done over and over again.
Practices in automation testing
For automation testing, the choice of the right tools, technical knowledge, and test automation framework is required to get an accurate rate. In order to perform automation testing successfully, it is vital to get knowledge of its best practices.
Below we will discuss some best practices in automation testing, which will help the tester to execute and organize automated tests with maintaining a balance between automated and manual tests.
Make a better plan for automation testing
Automation testing is no exception, which also requires a robust strategy. For automation testing, it is essential to plan the test carefully by defining the scope of automation and its priorities while analyzing any risks and available resources.
The tester needs to clearly define and write the test cases in such a way that it is self-contained and easy to understand. Further, automation needs resource acquisition in terms of software and machine, which can turn gridlock into a need for time and resources. Therefore, planning is vital to avoid issues of overrunning the cost and schedules.
Be prompt with testing during development
In the process of development of the application, on the addition of new features or changes, identification of bugs is important. It is important to identify the bug early so it can easily be fixed. However, if the bug is found late, it can impact the functionality of the application and productivity.
Make use of tools for scheduling testing automatically
There are several tools available that can be used to schedule the automatic scheduling. For example, LambdaTest is a cloud-based cross-browser testing platform through which scheduling can be done. This helps to make sure that code is continuously being tested.
Set up alerts for the failure of the test
In automation testing, the identification of bug and fixing it is the major aspects of the successful running of the application. Alert should be set up on identifying the bug during the automation testing as it will help the tester decide whether to abort the current test or complete it.
For example, if a serious bug is identified that can hamper the security of the application, an alert will help in taking quick action to abort and fix it soon.
Need to know about the test that can be automated
Automating all tests at once is difficult; hence it is crucial to understand which tests should be automated. Below are the types of such tests highlighted.
- Tests causing failure due to human error.
- Monotonous test
- Repetitive test
- Tests unable to be done manually
- High-risk test
- Test requiring multiple data sets
- Test required to be run in different hardware and software platforms
Make the right choice for the test automation approach
The development of automation test cases requires an appropriate automation approach. According to the requirement of the test, the choice can be made between the five kinds of automation framework: hybrid framework, library architecture, modular-based, data-driven, and linear.
Before choosing the test automation approach, it is essential to perform risk analysis on the project, involve the right people, and review the test artifact with development.
Right choice for automation testing tools
Making the right choice of automation testing tools depends on the requirement of the testing. Many options available in the market provide automation testing, like Selenium, Appium, and others. The testing team should make an automation tool strategy on the resource and requirements.
It is crucial to note the choice of automation tools should solve your issues. It is not important to rush with the best automation testing tool. Rather, investigate the test automation framework needed for configuration and proceed with the selection of software that possesses such key functionalities.
Require dividing the automation testing effort effectively
In the practice of automation testing, the development of different tests depends on the skills of the QA engineers. It is crucial to recognize the experience and skills of team members and accordingly divide the automation testing efforts. For example, writing automated test scripts needs knowledge of the scripting language. Thus, such work should be divided among experts with sound script languages.
Maintenance of records is needed for efficient debugging
In the situation of failure of tests, it is significant to keep a record of such so that testers can recognize and mark the rationale for the test failure.
It is advisable to choose automation testing tools, which have an in-built mechanism for taking browser screenshots for each test step. On LambdaTest, each test executed is recorded in the remote machine. Bug tracking and Bug reporting are important practices that need to be followed by the QA team in the future.
Conclusion
Automation testing is done for the creation of high-quality software, which is guided in the present blog based on best practices.
LambdaTest provides all the features that help in following the best practices. Along with this, LambdaTest lets you perform many types of testing such as continuous testing, unit testing, user acceptance testing, and many more.
Some of them are- it allows to divide the test into individual test parts, supports keyword-driven testing on blazing-fast online Selenium Grid, and supports different scripting languages like PHP, Laravel, Ruby, C#, Python, and Python.
