Automated Software Testing
Automated software testing in its most general sense means testing of test scenarios automatically. The main advantage of this approach is a significant reduction of effort and cost for long-term projects, as well as minimization of the human factor. In addition, automated software testing allows you to run many times as many unique test scenarios, creating the necessary depth of system coverage by checks. And today in this article we will find out what it is and all the advantages of automated testing!
Automated Software Testing – Full Cycle:
Most companies enable these benefits to the fullest extent by providing a full cycle of automation: from internal to external. In the first case, automation is carried out within the framework of complex automated software testing, which is carried out by our specialists in their companies. In the second case, specialists develop test suites, which can be executed on the customer’s side. They are ready to perform automation from scratch by developing and approving test approaches, selecting and reasoning the necessary tools, and deploying an independent test environment. They take an active part in the processes of efficiency and cost-effectiveness evaluation of automated scenarios implementation on projects, calculating quantitative and qualitative indicators.
Automation Is Not Suitable for Everyone and Everything
Let’s break down the popular theses:
1 Automation saves time and resources
Reality: Automation saves time by running test scenarios multiple times. Why automate the process if the script will run once?
2 Automation saves time and resources
Reality: The thesis is valid only for running scenarios on a stable system. Sometimes debugging an automation script and getting it to run consistently will take more time than “working by hand”.
3 Broader test coverage of the application functions
Reality: This is true only if the automation system allows you to automate the function.
4 Automation allows you to test often and thoroughly
Reality: The thesis is true, but with one nuance: the scenarios are executed equally, which leads to a pesticide effect (when test scenarios are run regularly, bugs stop being found).
Automation Has Its Own Advantages:
- Building and implementing a complete DevOps process.
- Fast preparation of large amounts of test data.
- Ability to quickly test software before publishing the code.
- Fast bug fixes verification by testers.
- Reducing the time needed to fully test a product from several weeks to several hours (depending on the product).
It may seem that automation is efficient only for a narrow range of purposes and in general is a complicated thing to leave much time and money on. This is true if you don’t consider the following factors to prepare your mind for future automation.
- The appropriateness of the capabilities of the chosen tool/platform to automate your software testing (or the test model to test your software).
- The skill requirements of the staff to operate the tool.
- Complexity of training.
- Complexity and cost of scaling.
- Cost of the tool.
What Are the Challenges of Using Free Solutions:
- You need to have a good programming skill.
- Resource-intensive support and fine-tuning of the tools used.
- Configuring DevOps by yourself and without support -> Implementing an automation solution in DevOps by yourself and without support.
- Large resources to support documentation and preparation of training materials.
What Are the Challenges of Using Paid Solutions:
- The pleasure is quite expensive.
- The automation team must know English well.
- Scaling up individual products presented its own challenges.
What Have Realized About Test Automation:
- If you properly define the goals, the automation product, and form the constraints, you end up with a working system for automated verification of software change deliveries.
- It’s much easier to automate API tests than UI tests.
- Implementing automation comes with the need to advertise the process to all team members.
Reliable Results
When choosing automated software testing, time spent on system analysis, selection of means for implementation of autotests, and writing autotests should be taken into account. These stages are the most time-consuming in automation. The process of test execution is strictly controlled, while the results are regularly analyzed by the responsible specialists and checked with special software tools. Significant updates of the product under test often require maintenance of the autotests in the state of actuality at a certain point in time. As a result of a set of such measures, the reliability of the results increases and the cost of retesting is minimized. In addition, the human factor is minimized.
Separately, the integration of autotests into quality management systems and version control systems makes it possible to make a decision on the operability of the functionality covered by the autotests even before the release of a new build.
Wide “Geography” of Application
Along with web development, the development of interfaces for mobile applications is also actively developing. Thus, the wide experience of our company’s specialists allowed implementing a lot of solutions by introducing a number of tools for automated testing of mobile applications.
Automated testing of web applications and mobile applications is:
- Responsiveness (the set of autotests for a new build is performed in less than 1 hour, informing the quality).
- Reliability (elimination of human factor).
- Integratability (the autotest project is built into the assembly management system).
- Inclusiveness (a person cannot fill the database with hundreds of billions of records, each of which has 100 fields).
- Scalability (developed autotests can be quickly applied to similar functionality or adapted to cover new modules)
- Structured statistics (in a human-readable form).
- Regular reporting.
What Does Automated Testing
Competitive product.
Tests help identify threats and make the product more productive without increasing cost.
Accelerated releases.
Designing tests in a pyramid fashion helps you get an advantage in product delivery speed.
Fewer routines.
Automation (including regression tests) frees up specialist time for more important tasks.
Bottom Line
As a result, autotests work even when you sleep. Robots run automatically, remotely, on a schedule. They don’t get distracted, they don’t forget, and they do the test as many times as needed. The robot will pass the test 99% of the time faster than a manual tester. In the remaining 1% of the time, don’t forget that a human can get tired and a robot can’t. So auto testing has so many advantages and I hope you learned about it today!