Automated testing: The benefits and best practices
April 18, 2023 2023-11-06 19:16Automated testing: The benefits and best practices
Automated testing: The benefits and best practices
In spite of the fact that every software is tested by the development team before being released, there are always bugs. Test engineers work hard to find them before the product is launched, but even the most thorough manual testing techniques can’t prevent them from appearing. The greatest method to improve the quality, speed, and breadth of your software testing is to use test automation software.
In manual software testing, a person sits in front of a computer and methodically navigates the application’s displays, tries out different input and usage scenarios, and records their findings by comparing them to the intended behavior. Source code updates and other circumstances, such as numerous operating systems and hardware configurations, necessitate frequent iterations of manual tests throughout the development cycle.
An automated testing tool can replay manual tests that have already been recorded and defined, then compare the actual behavior to the predicted behavior and report back to a test engineer on whether or not the test passed. Automated tests may be simply replicated and even expanded to carry out additional activities that would be impossible with manual testing.
Because of this, astute project managers have come to recognize the importance of automated software testing to the success of their endeavors. Become a successful software tester by joining the software testing training in Chennai at SLA and thus earn lucratively.
Benefits of Automated Testing
Automated software testing has been widely acknowledged as a necessity for large software development firms, but its implementation is typically seen as excessively costly or complicated for smaller businesses. Automation Tools are ideal enough for the world’s largest and most reputable organizations to use, but also accessible enough for one-developer firms as they are affordable.
Automated testing is cost-effective and efficient
The quality of software requires frequent testing throughout the development cycle. Software tests should be run again whenever the source code is changed. The software could be tested on every system configuration and OS version it supports before each release. Rerunning these tests manually will take a lot of time and money. Automated testing is more rapid than traditional tests and can be conducted repeatedly without added cost.
Automating software testing can cut down the amount of time needed to complete repetitive tests from days to hours. There will be a direct financial benefit from the time savings.
Accuracy is Increased by Testing
Manual testing can be tedious and error-prone, even for the most careful testers. Automated tests are run repeatedly and always capture the same information about the outcomes. Because software testers are no longer burdened with mundane manual tests, they are better able to focus on developing and implementing sophisticated automation frameworks.
Significantly Expands the Scope of Your Tests
Software quality can be enhanced through the use of automated testing due to its increased depth and scope. Longer tests, which are typically skipped during manual testing, can now be executed without human intervention. They can even be used on a wide variety of PCs.
Automatic software testing can inspect a program’s internals, including its memory, data tables, files, and program states, to check if it is functioning as intended. In contrast to manual testing, test automation makes it simple to run hundreds of unique complicated test cases in each test run.
Automation Is Capable of What Manual Testing Is Not
Even the most robust software and quality assurance teams can’t simulate thousands of users in a controlled web application test. Automated testing can replicate the actions of hundreds or even thousands of users on a network, with programs, and on the web.
Engineers and QA professionals alike benefit from automated testing
When developers utilize automated tests together, they can discover issues before they reach quality assurance. The team or developer can be alerted if the tests fail automatically after source code changes are checked in. These kinds of enhancements are a huge time-saver and morale-booster for programmers.
The Atmosphere on the QA and Development Teams Has Gotten Better
This is difficult to quantify, but we can attest to it from personal experience. Automated software testing frees up your team to focus on higher-value endeavors by handling mundane activities. Members of the team develop their abilities and self-assurance, which benefits the company as a whole.
If automated testing is conducted properly and with good design, there is the potential for enormous and satisfying results. If we follow the best practices for automated testing, the return on investment (ROI) will improve dramatically over time.
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On the other hand, this does not imply that we can totally rely on automated testing and do away with manual testing altogether. The process of testing software as a whole will always consist of a combination of human and automated test cases. This is carried out to attain high standards and improved speed while making the most use of available resources. Let’s talk about the best practices for automated testing.
Best Practices for Automated Testing
Let’s take a look at some of the best practices for automated testing that we can implement when we’re automating the test cases so that our automated testing efforts are successful.
1.Designing the Test cases with Smart Manual Testers
The process of automating new software cannot begin right away. The first thing that needs to be done is to establish a reliable and well-designed manual testing procedure, together with the appropriate test cases. After the setting, the development code, and the manual test procedures have reached a stable state, we will be able to begin discussing the possibility of integrating automated testing into the project.
Hence, the appropriate test cases for automated testing shall be selected with the support of manual testers and applied to automated testing. This spares the valuable time of manual test engineers to focus on tasks that require more human attention, including exploratory testing, usability testing, and ad hoc testing.
The question now is: how do we determine which cases should be automated? What exactly is going to happen in the following point?
2.Locate the perfect test cases for the automated testing system.
Even though every test case included in a project is capable of being automated, this does not necessarily mean that it ought to be automated. When it comes to choosing the best situations for automation, we need to exercise extreme caution. If we do not take this precaution, we risk squandering both time and resources on the creation of scripts for scenarios that are only sometimes executed.
Because of their high degree of repetition, the following test cases might be good candidates for automation:
Regression Tests
We must check and make sure that the recent changes to the code have not resulted in the introduction of any new bugs. Manually putting through the motions of running regression test cases can be a tedious and time-consuming endeavor for the manual test engineer. Because of this, automated testing benefits greatly from the utilization of regression test cases.
This frees up the time for the test engineer to focus on other, perhaps more fruitful tasks that call for manual attention, such as exploratory testing.
Smoke Tests
When a new build is made available for testing, smoke testing is carried out to ensure that the most important features of the product have been validated. Due to the fact that these tests are executed after each build, they make excellent candidates for automated testing.
The vast majority of smoke tests are incorporated into Continuous Integration (CI) technologies like Jenkins so that they may be executed immediately when a new build is made available by the development team.
Data-Driven Tests
In data-driven testing, the same piece of code is executed several times on data that is saved in a variety of file formats, such as CSV and Excel files, as well as DB tables and JSON files.
- A decrease in the amount of time: Performing Data-driven testing that is performed manually requires a lot of time. When a test scenario is modified, the amount of time spent testing is cut down significantly thanks to automated testing. The only file that has to be modified is the one that stores the data.
- Test data of the highest possible quality: The test data that we use for data-driven testing should be of the highest possible quality and should be easy to maintain. In the alternative, if we are only using filler data or data that is challenging to maintain later due to changes in requirements, our objective for automating the process will be defeated.
Challenging manual test cases
The manual test cases that are difficult to carry out, such as situations involving a large number of numerical computations, lend themselves particularly well to being converted into automated test scripts.
Because they take up the time of the manual tester, it is preferable to delegate such calculations to the automation scripts in order to make the most of the time that is saved. In a nutshell, the test cases that are repetitive by their definition are the ones that should be used for automated testing.
3.The Consistency of the Environment and the Application Being Examined (AUT)
It is important to maintain stability in both the application and the environment in order for the automation scripts to produce reliable results.
Stable AUT
If the AUT is unstable and is constantly changing, the QA team will need to update the automation scripts for each new release. The utility of automated testing will decrease as a result of this. Before beginning the automated testing process, then, verify that the application is in a stable state.
Stable Environment
If the context is unstable, the actual result will differ from the predicted result on every automated test run. This is because the actual result is based on the current state of the environment. In this particular scenario, verifying that the test run was performed correctly and then eventually debugging it won’t be an easy task.
4.Choose Which Automated Testing Tool Best Suits Your Needs
The selection of the appropriate tool is the following essential step in the best practices for automated testing. There is a plethora of automated testing software available right now, and it is of the utmost significance to evaluate it.
Before choosing an automated testing tool, the following points should be considered. Become familiar with the criteria that will assist you in selecting the appropriate automation testing tool.
Application Technology
Is our application a desktop application, one that runs on the web, or one that runs on mobile devices? The significance of this study lies in the fact that it will be useful in deciding which tool to utilize.
Platforms as well as Operating Systems
Which computer operating systems and platforms is the application going to support? Is your automated testing tool compatible with iOS and Android, or does it support both? Consider both the specifications you need to be met and the capabilities of the automated testing solution.
Skillset accessible
The line between a manual tester and an automation test engineer is becoming increasingly blurry in today’s world. A member of the quality assurance team needs to be competent in both manual testing and automated testing in order to fulfill their role.
A working knowledge of scripting and programming languages such as Java, Python, Ruby, and Perl, among others, is required for automated testing. It’s possible that a single test engineer is fluent in one language but has no knowledge of the other. So, it is vital to discuss with the quality assurance team whether or not they are comfortable with the language and the automated testing tool.
If there is a mismatch between the available skillsets and the skill sets that are required, the following options can be considered:
- Instruction: The quality assurance crew can be instructed in the necessary scripting language.
- Employ new personnel: It is possible to employ new personnel who are familiar with the automated testing tool and the scripting language that corresponds to it.
- Test automation tools that do not require scripts: Test automation tools that do not require scripts free testers from the need to write code. These scriptless technologies could be based on Natural Language Processing (NLP), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Models, or anything else.
The Price of the Tool
Is the code for your tool freely available? Or are you making use of some tools that require a license? When deciding on an automated testing tool, it is important first to determine your budget and then evaluate the cost of the tool.
For the most part, various open-source tools are offered for use with various applications, including mobile, web-based, and desktop programs. If the firm does not wish to spend money on licensed tools, then the quality assurance team needs to be familiar with all of the different tools that are available because the application operates on multiple platforms.
Since a unique licensed tool can give solutions for all platforms and technologies, using a licensed tool is the only way to circumvent this limitation. Because of this, the quality assurance team will only need to become familiar with a single tool; hence, this is a smart solution even if the application operates on many platforms.
Also, the licensed tool offers services and support for the tool, which is a positive aspect of the licensed tool.
5.Observe the Fundamentals of Programming Design.
Only when an automated testing tool that uses a scripting language is employed does the authoring of test scripts resemble the process of software programming. So, it is essential to adhere to the programming design principles in order to create a testing framework that is straightforward, easy to maintain, and versatile.
These days, we can take advantage of scriptless automated testing solutions, which free us from the necessity of being concerned with the programming design principles. Learn more about the advantages of scriptless automation by reading this article.
6.Basic Automation Test Design
Make an effort to keep the design of the automation test straightforward so that it may be easily understood and maintained.
- Maintaining separation between the test data and test scripts will make test execution much simpler.
- Just the test data files should need to be modified whenever there is a change to the test data, and the test scripts should use variable names to retrieve the necessary data without requiring any changes to the scripts themselves whenever there is a change to the test data. Maintain the separation between the test cases.
- If the framework contains cases that are dependent on one another, then parallel execution will not be allowed. This will defeat the goal of automating the testing process.
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7.Screenshots, logs, and comprehensive reports are all very significant
You are required, as part of the best practices for automated testing, to select a framework that offers logs, screenshots, and detailed test results on fails and passes for debugging. This will be helpful for the test engineer in determining the precise location of the flaw or determining whether there is a problem with the test script.
After each iteration of testing, these screenshots and reports are the deliverables that are generated. As a result, they need to be able to spot the problem without much effort, and when they do, the tester should immediately take the necessary action, such as recording the bug in a defect tracking tool, rather than wasting time on analysis.
8.Develop Test Automation That Can Handle Frequent User Interface Updates
Scripted or keyword-driven automated tests have to be tailored to the software being tested. In the early phases of development, the application’s user interface may evolve throughout multiple builds. The findings of your tests could be impacted, or your automated tests might stop functioning properly on subsequent versions of the software. However, automated testing techniques rely on a long list of attributes to properly identify and localize an item.
In some cases, the location coordinates are used by the testing tool to locate the target. Changes to the control’s caption or placement, for example, will cause the automated test to fail since it will no longer be able to locate the object being tested.
Before running the automated test against the updated application, it may be necessary to update all occurrences of the old names with the new ones. When you give your controls distinct names, however, your automated tests will continue to function normally regardless of any alterations to the user interface. This also prevents the automated testing tool from using less reliable and breakable location coordinates to locate the control during testing.
9.Examine and Eliminate Any Tests That Are Older or Unusable
It is necessary to do regular checks on the test scripts in order to identify any situations that are out of date, unused, or irrelevant. It is recommended that these cases be eliminated because continuing to process them when they are not necessary wastes both time and resources. Approach SLa, the best software testing training institute in Chennai to kick start your career as a software tester.
10.The Convention on the Naming of Things
It is important that tests be clean in order to keep the test cases readable and manageable. The nomenclature of test classes, class fields, and test methods, variables should be self-explanatory in order to make it simple for the test engineer to determine which specific test has failed or succeeded without exerting a great deal of mental effort. The name ought to explain everything else.
In the case of a class method that is responsible for the creation of a new user account, for instance, the registration is considered to have been successful and a message indicating this fact is shown to the user. Additional information on writing clean code can be found here. We may use the following method name to clarify what the method does and what the intended result is: –signup NewUser ValidEmail ShouldCreateNewUserAndDisplaySuccessMessage().
When it comes to automated testing solutions that don’t require scripts, the naming convention and other design-related conventions are automatically taken care of for you. As a result, it is very empowering for a quality assurance engineer.
Summary
While automated testing is an integral part of SDL, it is critical to employ best practices to maximize the effectiveness of your tests. When considering SDLC, it is important to consider time, quality, cost, and mitigation of risk. The true magic lies in the optimal combination of these four elements.
Best practices for Automated Testing have been addressed to help ensure a positive testing experience. Attend SLA’s Automation Testing Training in Chennai to Get Knowledge on the advantages of Automated testing.
