Automated testing is beneficial from various ends. It fast tracks the testing process and reduces the potential human errors while checking the code for bugs or inconsistencies.
Working with automated testing means finishing up the process quickly and with higher accuracy. Testing any application or website is crucial for providing an intuitive and smooth user experience.
Even though testing automation is designed to reduce the number of errors, things can go wrong here just as easily as they can with a person testing the solution. Hence, you must follow some best practices to streamline automated testing and ensure effective results with a minimal number of errors.
Why is Automated Testing Important?
Applications and websites today are added with more sophisticated features. These features may increase utility for the users, but assuring their effective performance becomes harder for developers and testers.
As a result, testing automation is used to test the complex code scripts along with other basic functions and features. Here are a few advantages or reasons for implementing the automated testing.
- Time and Money Saving
Testing is not a one-time process. Rather, to ensure the best performance, one software has to undergo several tests and that too, several times. Employing a team of testers to go through this process will take more time and money.
Furthermore, with every release and update, the code is tested again. Automated testing is cost-effective and time-efficient as it completes the tasks with speed. If implemented right, automated testing can complete the repetitive processes in days against hours required by a team of human testers.
- Increases the Scope and Coverage of Tests
Testing a lengthy code script for a human is way too complex, which might lead to skipping or ignoring a few steps. The impact is on the end-user, and it can also deteriorate the user experience.
If you choose automated testing, no code line will be missed, plus you can also increase the test coverage as and when required. In terms of coverage, you can instruct the testing sequence to include memory contents, internal program testing, data tables, file contents, etc.
Automated testing can execute any amount of code and run complex test cases, ensuring that every component of the solution is running as expected.
- Load Testing
In manual software testing, load testing is always pushed to the limit, mostly until the end of the development cycle. Modern development processes like Agile Development and Continuous Integration methods facilitate early load testing.
Effective load testing must include parameterized settings that will accurately configure the variables randomizing the real-world events.
- Better Confidence in the Solution
Agile development methodology divides the entire development task into short cycles called Sprints. These sprints have a usual time span of two to three weeks. For bigger releases, the number of sprints will also increase.
Every sprint includes a function or a set of features that help complete a function, which connects to build a comprehensive product at the end. Manual testing is counter-productive in Sprint-led development processes.
Automated testing checks every sprint thoroughly, and the desired results boost the confidence of the developers ensuring that they have written the right code for the task.
These are only a few of the advantages attached to automated testing. Besides speeding up the process, automating the software testing also helps measure the metrics, and it has become the foundation for DevOps.
However, every benefit of automated testing will bear fruit if the process is implemented correctly. It needs the right set of tools, practices, and technical acumen to execute the process.
Automated Testing Best Practices to Follow
1. Decide the Test Cases
Even if you have the luxury of automating the testing, don’t implement it for all testing. Determine what test cases you can and should automate while resorting to manual testing for the others.
Here’s how you can determine this. The test cases which do not require repetitive testing can be done manually. Automate the testing for the cases that are long, complex, and need repeated testing.
Other than this, use your experience to select the Sprints that suffer from the most human error. Automating them can reduce the error percentage. Furthermore, automate the tests that have multiple data sets and are humanly impossible to perform.
2. Select the Right Tools for Automated Testing
Understand your requirements to choose the right tool for testing. There are many automated testing tools available in the market. Not every tool will be a good fit for your tasks, which means that you cannot select any tool randomly.
Do the research and align their features with your requirements. Some of the things you need to look out include;
- Support and compatibility for the platforms and technology you are using for developing the solution. For instance, you might be using .NET, JavaScript, Rect, MongoDB, etc., for different aspects of building the solution.
Does the testing platform you select have compatibility with them? Furthermore, testing tools can also vary between the platforms you are building the application for, like iOS, Android, Windows, etc.
- Secondly, match your team’s skills to work with the testing tools and write the testing script. How well can your Quality Assurance department execute the testing?
- Assure before using a tool that it can create reusable automated testing scripts. In addition to this, check whether the tool you are using is easy to maintain and use.
- Lastly, you must choose a tool that can easily integrate with your existing development ecosystem. This does not include only development technologies, but CI/CD tools like Jenkins, Azure, etc.
3. Delegate the Tasks According to the Person’s Skills
Don’t pin everything on one guy, even if you are using automated testing. Divide the testing tasks to different individuals based on their understanding of the tool and the entire exercise.
Working with a proprietary tool is easier than an open-source one as the scripting and designing the automated tests is more complex in the latter than the former. Here too, the ability of the team members to work with these tools depends on their skills.
4. Choose the Relevant Automation Approach
Your approach to automated testing builds the base for successful testing. Always prefer to build a robust and easy-to-main testing approach. If you are too rigid or too flexible, the outcome can differ from the desired result.
While choosing the approach, you have five automation frameworks to choose from, Modular-based, Liner, Library architecture, Data-driver, and Hybrid.
Along with this, take care that you consistently review the testing structure. As the development practices change influenced by the changes in business priorities, the testing structures need to change accordingly.
5. Create Relevant and High-Quality Test Data
High-quality test data is crucial for effective and accurate automated testing. The tool you choose for testing must be able to import the test data stored externally in XML files or excel sheets, or even database tables.
Ensure that the tool you use is compatible with these data files and can work on the data supplied by the same. Creating data sets for the testing tool is a mundane task, but it should not be taken lightly.
6. Design Automated Testing
Designing the test comes after you have chosen the tool, created the data sets, and built the structure. Designing is about writing the scripts and then executing them on the tool.
Ensure that your testing design corresponds to the development of the solution. Like if you are building a software, the testing requirements of that software must be designed parallel to the software development.
This helps you set the right order of testing the modules or Sprints (in testing). Furthermore, adopt behavioral-driven development, which instructs using the user stories for creating the test scripts.
This will make sure that your testing sequence and the end-users requirements are aligned.
7. Executing Automated Testing
Executing the testing is the final step of the entire process. While the testing is ongoing, all you have to do is take care of the AUT and the power source to ensure continuous testing.
In addition to this, work on maintaining the testing quality by implementing accurate CI/CD and DevOps processes. Some of the testing environments may also be based on testing environments like local and offline settings.
While executing the tests, separate the Sprints that are not dependent on other Sprints. For instance, the payment page of the application does not have a connection to the login page.
So, you can separate these two pages and run their tests parallel to each other. It will save time and effort. Lastly, ensure that the testing is pinned on stable servers.
Conclusion
Testing one application is going to be different from testing the second app or website. So, you have on your hands two different solutions with the different user base, features, and outcomes. Without automated testing, successfully completing the tests for both applications can be time-consuming.
Bigger development companies can have many more than two digital solutions being developed at once. In such situations, automated testing is your key to success. However, execute everything related to automated testing carefully and with prior understanding of the entire process.
Above you will find the best practices to work on automated testing and the ways to ensure successful testing.
News From
MobMaxime Category: Mobile App Developers Profile: MobMaxime is an established Web and Mobile Application Development Company delivering Xamarin Mobile App Development and React Native App Development & Mobility Services of any complexity to clients worldwide. We’ve been in the IT business for over 9+ years now and have a strong team of 75+ skilled IT experts. Our customers are companies of all sizes from start-ups to large enterprises who realise that they need professional Internet Solutions to generate revenue streams and establish strong ...
For more information:
