In all honesty, the early stages of establishing a test automation strategy may require a certain amount of time, effort, study, and resources. However, once configured, test automation processes turn out to be solid investments that offer huge benefits in terms of competitive advantage, improved software quality, and improved user experience. All this makes automation worth the investment and a necessary element in successful software development activities. In our projects, we sometimes build a custom test framework based on a free open source tool like Selenium.
The test pyramid, also known as the test automation pyramid, describes the types of tests that will be included in an automated test suite. The goal is to provide immediate feedback to ensure that code changes don’t interfere with existing features. In addition, fast results lead to faster improvements and ultimately to a faster time-to-market. As more teams and organizations adopt test automation, they need the right tools and skills, as well as the right test automation strategy. Because automation requires multiple tools, frameworks, and programming languages to achieve its goals, an organization imposes an overall structure on the entire process.
Finally, make sure you can demonstrate the value of your efforts with quantifiable results. For example, it can show how many working days of release testing are saved, how many builds can be tested per week, or how you can increase platform coverage. Choose the one that shows improvement at the most painful point in your organization’s software delivery pipeline. An automation testing strategy is a “subset” of a testing strategy.
Your test automation strategy should also consider the types of tests you need to automate. For example, manual exploratory testing is still an important part of the software testing process. However, automating functional and regression tests can save you a lot of time and effort. Not having the right set of tools/frameworks and moving forward without a test automation strategy takes its toll.
The data to be entered into the input fields during an automated test is usually stored in an external file. This data can be read from a database or other data source, such as text or XML files, Excel sheets, and database tables. A good automated testing tool really understands the content of the data files and repeats the content of the automated test. The use of external data makes your automated tests reusable and maintenance-friendly.
You also need to define where you want to store your codes and how they can be implemented, how secure the environments in which you run your codes are, and so on. In addition, it’s worth setting up a security scanning process for your automation testing framework. TestingXperts is at the forefront of enabling test automation services for customers across all industries. We have expert quality control teams with extensive experience in all major commercial and open source automation tools. Tx has an internally extensible automation framework, Tx-Automate, which is modular, reusable, and compatible and can be customized to meet business needs.
If you want your versions to run successfully, you need a clear strategy. All the benefits of automation testing can backfire without a test automation strategy. Therefore, in order to implement automation testing and obtain a robust and better planned development lifecycle, an effective test automation strategy is needed. Let’s discuss in detail the key elements of an effective test automation strategy. Extensive testing is crucial for the success of a software product. If your software isn’t working properly, it’s very likely that most people won’t buy or use it…
You need a clear owner for every automation project, someone to keep you moving toward clearly defined goals, but everyone in your organization also needs to be involved. No one should be responsible for developing and maintaining the entire automation infrastructure. If necessary, spend some budget resources to train your team members so that everyone can at least write a simple script, run tests, and analyze the results. Their experts can handle the more complex tasks of writing frameworks, designing your automation architecture, or even advising other team members. The wisest choice of an automation tool can speed up the entire automation testing process. The automation test plan should include a complete list of test automation frameworks with their pros and cons, pricing, and in-house expertise.
These best practices are a successful foundation to start improving the quality of your software. Defining the testing approach involves assigning the appropriate framework and deciding to proceed with different types of tests. It also includes determining the order of execution of multiple types of tests, such as integration tests, unit tests, etc. The test pyramid guides you through choosing all possible tests to include in the test automation strategy and execution order. Consider a testing framework that continuously tests and verifies the product at different levels.
Usually, taking various tests is based on the skill levels of quality control engineers. It’s important to identify the level of experience and skills for each of your team members and distribute your automated testing efforts accordingly. For example, writing automated test scripts requires an expert knowledge of scripting languages. Therefore, to perform these tasks, you must have QA technicians who know the scripting language provided by the automated testing tool. There are many automated testing tools on the market, and it’s important to choose the automated testing tool that best suits your overall requirements.