Do's and Don'ts of Automation Testing

What is Automation in Testing? Automation Testing is the method of testing software products with special testing tools and frameworks to minimize human inte

What is Automation in Testing?

Automation Testing is the method of testing software products with special testing tools and frameworks to minimize human intervention and maximize quality. Automation Testing is done with the help of automation software, and it controls the flow of the execution of tests as per the written test scripts. They are then compared with predicted outcomes to ensure the quality and reliability of the application. With Automation Testing, one can perform necessary repetitive tasks and those tasks that are hard to achieve with manual testing. Therefore, this type of testing is critical for CI/CD tools like jenkins pipelines. So, what is automated testing in software engineering? And What does UAT Tester do? This article will answer all the questions you may have.

Why Automation Testing?

When a company develops a product, it is bound to have defects. So, before the release of the product, the company needs to capture the flaws in it to provide a seamless user experience. It is the responsibility of the testing team to perform various kinds of testing, from functional to non-functional, to ensure the effectiveness, efficiency, and better user experience of the overall product. UAT tester tests to check whether a software solution works for the user or not.

Though testers do Manual and Automation testing both, doing Automation Testing eases a lot of manual work, provides accurate results, and saves up a lot of time, which results in the quicker delivery of the product. Platforms like Jenkins for test automation has proven to be a popular choice in the world of automation testing.

Tools for Test Automation

Test automation vs Manual testing has been an ongoing debate however Test automation often is deemed superior. An automation tool should be chosen based on the type of testing and the type of framework you are going to implement. There are a lot of tools available in the market for you to choose from as per your requirements. Some of the most widely used automation tools are listed below.

Selenium: Test Automation Selenium is a tool to test web applications and web browsers. It has multiple powerful tools for testing web applications. Also, it supports multiple platforms and browsers. The selenium webdriver can also execute Javascript for test automation. Test automation (Javascript) is one of the most widely used programming languages by developers.

Sikuli: Sikuli is an open-source automation testing tool used to perform GUI testing.

JMeter: It is a tool that is used for performance tests.

QuickTest Professional (QTP): Testers use QTP to perform automated regression testing to identify gaps between the actual and desired results and detect the errors/defects that the outcome has.

JUnit and NUnit: These tools are used by professionals to perform unit testing.

Python: As well as being a programming language, test automation with/in python is possible as it comes with a set of tools and libraries to help you create automated tests for your application.

TestNG: TestNG is more like a framework than a tool, which supports Selenium, REST Assured, Appium, etc. Testers can generate HTML reports for the tests with their status—passed, failed, or skilled. Later on, they can re-execute the failed test cases.

SoapUI: It is a testing tool used for API testing.

Appium: It is a tool to perform mobile application testing and native app testing.

Testing Frameworks

A testing framework has a set of guidelines for the professionals that include coding standards, repository management and handling of test data to get beneficiary outcomes such as easy code reuse, reduced time to manage scripts, and high portability. Here are the commonly used testing frameworks:

Linear Framework: This is the simplest framework of all. Under this framework, you need to write a simple code to run the test cases without any modularity or sequential steps. It works as a record-and-playback model.

Keyword-driven Framework: It is a scripting technique where you associate keywords with certain actions, such as opening or closing of a browser, mouse-click events, and others. Later on, in your test scripts, you can call these keywords to perform a specific step. Also, you will have a file where you will maintain all the keywords, along with the actions they perform.

Data-driven Framework: In a data-driven framework, all the test case data inputs are stored in the table or in extension files, including .xls, .xml, .csv, etc. While executing the test scripts, it will read the values from the table. With the help of this framework, you can perform both positive and negative test cases.

Page Object Model Framework: In the POM framework, you will create an object repository for the web UI elements. It allows you to call these methods later on without having to write the code again. Thus, it results in less verbosity, code reusability, and reduced time-consumption to write test scripts.

Modular Framework: The modular framework allows you to divide the test scripts into small, independent modules. These modules will interact with each other in a hierarchical manner to run large test scripts. This will also help you create the required test scenarios and test the scripts individually.

Benefits of Automation Testing

It proves to be reliable since it is carried out by efficient testing tools.
70% faster than manual testing, which saves a lot of time for testers and the organization as a whole.
Automation Testing avoids human intervention while executing test scripts.
It allows re-usability and re-running of test cases.
It increases the speed and efficiency of the software testing process.
Automation Testing covers all the application features.
It also allows for the faster delivery of the product into the market.
Faster feedback systems, which come with Automation Testing, results in an easy communication flow between developers and testers and helps detect and fix bugs earlier.
It offers improved accuracy as it holds no possibility of human errors.
It has the capability to run massive amounts of test cases at a time.

The Right Automation Tool

Automation Testing is not possible without the right testing tool. Selecting the right tool is a critical phase in the testing life cycle where one has to consider the following points:

Familiarity with the tool among the resources on-board
Total budget and flexibility
Technologies and programming languages used to build the project
Choosing a tool that has a support team to take care of any queries and issues

Automation Test Plan, Design, and Strategy

As the name suggests, in this phase, you make a plan, design the architecture, and create a strategy to achieve the goal of test automation.

Test plan: Creation of test standards and procedures, hardware, software, and test data requirements
Test design: Design the test architecture to determine the flow of the test procedures that follow
Test strategy: Select a suitable test automation framework

Key test automation challenges:

Finding the right framework and tool
Effective communication & collaboration in team
Identifying the test automation strategy
Setting realistic expectations of automation
High initial investment
Inadequate testing infrastructure
Problems with data reliance
Finding the right skills
Stakeholders and end-users expectations

What to do for successful Test Automation

Break Your Tests Into Shorter And Independent Scenarios

Detecting issues will be easier for you if you have a suite that contains shorter and more specific scenarios. Do not test everything in a single test scenario. In that way, troubleshooting will become very difficult. So, try keeping it shorter and simpler.

Choose The Tests You Need Automating

Every test