Almost every organization, from small to large, run its business through a software system. Software companies are the one which take up the job of developing the software that a business requires. As the business needs to evolve, the software system that supports the business should also evolve. It is the responsibility of software companies to develop the software as per the business needs and deliver it sooner so that organizations can meet their business needs at a faster pace.
Information technology emergence has pushed the businesses towards growth so fast that it has made automation a mission critical activity. Automation has become inevitable in Software Industry also. It has been revolutionizing the way the software is developed and delivered. Automation Testing is one such concept that evolved to automate a few manual testing tasks that consume a lot of time and effort. Automation Testing has become vital to ensure the quality of the developed software before its release.
Agile and Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery methodologies have evolved in favor of delivering the software faster. Software test automation blends perfectly with these methodologies for accelerating the time to market. But achieving a flawless test automation is same as preparing a delicious dish where essential ingredients play a vital role in the success.
Here are a few essential ingredients for a flawless test automation:
Scope is the first ingredient that you should define first
You can get the most out of Automation Testing, when you define its scope in a right way. The first aspect that your scope should cover is, which features or functionalities of the application under test (AUT) should be automated. Testing a stable functionality should be automated first; if you automate the unstable feature, then your testing team will be wasting a lot of time and effort as the feature may tend to change in the future.
Every software company wants to achieve the maximum possible automation of their software testing. But, in real time, not all test scenarios can be automated, there is a limitation to automation you are trying to achieve in software testing. So, determining the test scenarios that you wanted to automate as per the business goals should be covered under scope.
Automation testing comes very handy in saving time and efforts on repeating the execution of the test cases whenever there is a need, and to test a functionality with different data set combinations to validate its behavior across the user input combinations. For example, it is essential to validate the user inputs to login to the application with different sets of data when testing a login page to ensure its functionality. Doing all the above manually is not at all feasible. So, the scope of automation testing is the first step towards implementing a flawless automation testing and making it successful.
Manual Test Cases are input for Automation, so automation test cases inherit the effectiveness that manual test cases have.
Creating an automation test case without a manual test case as an input is not possible. If you have effective manual test cases, then it means that you have effective automation testing. Implementing test automation will be easy only when you have nicely written manual test cases that are easy to comprehend.
But What makes a test case to be called as nicely written one?
A manual test case should have all clearly defined prerequisites and test data to drive test forward. Test steps and the expected result of the test should be clearly written, which makes sure the objective of the test. With an understanding of test steps to be performed, expected result and objective of the test, automation test engineers create effective automation test cases by identifying what all objects should be captured and what will be the navigation in the application.
The success of automation testing relies on test design, so it is one such ingredient that requires your attention.
Manual Testing gives the flavor of quality to automation testing outcome
Faster execution of test with quickly released results is only possible with Automation Testing but relying on it completely for the quality is not advisable. Test scenarios before they are automated, you need to ensure that they are tested manually and after automation testing before the release doing at least exploratory testing is recommended. Manual testing with test automation gives the highest possible quality to the application.
Don’t just automate regression, explore the opportunities
Most people think that automation testing can be leveraged only for regression testing, but automating smoke tests, acceptance tests, and all those tests that consume a lot of time and effort to run more often yields better outcome from test automation. When automation testing takes care of those tasks that are repetitive, then manual testers can focus on exploring test scenarios that improve the quality of AUT.
An automation testing tool is the most important ingredient that gives the value to all other ingredients in making the dish “Test Automation” delicious
Companies have a wide range of tools to choose from, so while deciding a tool a lot of aspects have to be taken into consideration. Selecting the right tool is not the end of the process rather it is the start, where you need to leverage all the above-mentioned ingredients through an automation tool to implement flawless and successful test automation.
Most of the tools available now demand automation test engineers with expertise of technical knowledge and coding skills, so this might bring the need of having both manual testers and automation test experts for a project. So, automation testers will work as developer leveraging their coding skills to create automation test scripts and manual testers will work as end users to test the application; both working in different ways bring confusion and disturbance in the team, making QA Managers/Leads to worry.
Here comes the need to adopt Scriptless Automation Testing Tool
Scriptless Automation Testing tool like “ClicAutomate”, offered by ClicTest, can pave the way for a flawless test automation and to get the best out of automation testing. Manual testers with the knowledge of the AUT and Subject Matter experts with the knowledge of the vertical that AUT belongs to, are empowered to automate different types of testing from smoke to acceptance testing. This results in delivering a quality software at a faster pace so that businesses can have a software that meet their prevailing business needs sooner.