The Best Test Automation Practice

Introduction

Test automation is becoming vital for success in today’s competitive software landscape. Not only is it more affordable than ever to implement automation tools, but their functionality has also expanded significantly, leading to the development of a wide range of robust frameworks. However, simply having a test automation framework isn’t enough; adhering to the best QA practices is crucial for ensuring long-term success.

Test automation frameworks serve as the foundation of effective software testing. They enable the testing team to automate, iterate, and generate comprehensive reports on testing outcomes. But to truly reap the benefits of automation, it’s essential to build frameworks that are scalable, maintainable, and adaptable. This can only be achieved by following established QA practices in automation testing.

In this article, we will explore some of the common challenges associated with test automation and outline the best QA practices that can help you overcome these obstacles. By integrating these practices into your project, you can maintain and even enhance the efficiency of your test automation efforts, ensuring your software meets the highest quality standards.

10 QA automation best practices

Software testing is a crucial component of the software development process. When conducted effectively, it ensures a successful product release, efficient performance, and a low defect rate. Implementing the best QA practices throughout the development cycle not only boosts high customer satisfaction but also contributes to a significant return on investment (ROI). By adhering to proven QA practices, teams can identify potential issues early, streamline workflows, and ultimately deliver a product that meets or exceeds customer expectations.

Now we will talk about a set of measures that will help you to improve the efficiency of test automation.

1) Start automating as early as possible

Starting automation early in the software development lifecycle is a cornerstone of the best QA practices. By embedding automation into the process from the outset, teams can ensure that quality is built into the product from the ground up, rather than being an afterthought. Early automation, particularly through unit testing, allows developers to catch and resolve issues before they evolve into more complex problems that are harder and more costly to fix.

Begin with automating high-value, repetitive tasks. Gradually expand your test coverage as you gain confidence in the stability of your automation framework.

Mykhailo Poliarush

CEO, ZappleTech Inc.

Moreover, initiating automation early enables continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, which are essential for maintaining high-quality standards throughout the development process. These QA practices not only streamline the testing process but also enhance the overall efficiency of the development team, allowing them to focus on delivering a robust and reliable product.

As the project progresses, expanding automation to include other types of tests, such as integration and end-to-end testing, ensures that the entire system functions as expected. This holistic approach to QA practices ensures that every component is thoroughly tested, leading to a more stable and secure final product. By adhering to these best QA practices, organizations can achieve faster release cycles, higher customer satisfaction, and ultimately, a competitive edge in the market.

2) Automate the repetitive tasks

Incorporating the best QA practices into your automation strategy requires a methodical approach to selecting which tasks to automate. Start by conducting a thorough analysis of your current testing processes. Identify repetitive tasks that consume significant time and resources but don’t necessarily require human judgment. These tasks often include data entry, regression testing, and repetitive test case execution. By automating these repetitive tasks, you free up your QA team to focus on more complex and creative testing activities, such as exploratory testing and critical analysis of new features.

Moreover, automating these tasks helps ensure consistency and accuracy in your testing process, as automated tests can be run repeatedly with the same precision, reducing the risk of human error. This approach is a cornerstone of effective QA practices because it allows your team to maintain high standards of quality while also improving productivity. The ability to quickly and reliably test new builds or features also accelerates the development process, allowing for faster releases and more frequent updates.

Additionally, when considering the best QA practices, it’s essential to continuously review and optimize your automated processes. Regularly update your list of automated tasks to adapt to new business priorities and emerging technologies. This ongoing refinement ensures that your automation efforts remain aligned with your overall quality assurance goals, making your QA practices both dynamic and robust.

Ultimately, the integration of automation into your QA practices is not just about saving time; it’s about enhancing the overall quality and reliability of your software products. By strategically automating the right tasks, you can achieve a more efficient, accurate, and scalable QA process that supports the long-term success of your business.

You can get the most benefit from automating the following types of tests:

• Tests that usually cause a human error or require multiple data sets
• Frequently used functionality with high-risk conditions
• Tests that are impossible to perform manually or that takes a lot of effort with manual execution
• Tests run on several environments

You don’t need to strive to achieve 100% automation coverage. Automate only when you are sure that it will improve the efficiency of testing and the overall product quality.

3) Set the goals of testing

When setting the goals of your testing, it is essential to start by creating a detailed automation plan. This plan should outline your objectives and specify which tests you intend to automate. Establishing clear goals is a fundamental aspect of best QA practices, as it helps ensure that your testing efforts are aligned with the desired outcomes.

To define the goal of each test, you must understand the specific action that the test will perform. It’s beneficial to break down your test into several smaller steps, each with a distinct purpose. This approach aligns with effective QA practices by ensuring that each test is focused and targeted. Avoid the temptation to use a single test for evaluating different aspects of the application’s behavior; instead, it’s more efficient to create separate tests for different parts of the app.

Moreover, consider dividing your tests into smaller, more manageable parts. This strategy not only makes the tests more comprehensive but also simplifies maintenance. You can easily update your test suite by adding smaller tests aimed at new functionalities, which is a hallmark of the best QA practices. As your collection of automated tests grows, you can consolidate them into larger tests that have broader goals, covering more extensive areas of the application. This method ensures that your testing remains thorough and scalable as your application evolves.

4) Select the right test automation tools

Selecting the right automated testing tool is crucial to the success of your automation project. Implementing the best QA practices when choosing a tool ensures that your testing process is efficient, reliable, and scalable. With many automated testing tools available on the market, it’s essential to evaluate them based on your specific requirements, such as ease of integration, support for multiple testing environments, and overall cost. Adopting QA practices like thorough research and trialing different tools can help you make an informed decision that aligns with your project goals and ultimately contributes to the success of your testing efforts Consider these key points when selecting an automated testing tool:

• Support of your platforms and environment
  You should select a tool that has flexible API and is compatible with the platforms you are operating on, your programming languages, and operating systems.
• Corresponding entry level
  Make sure that the skill level of your team matches the entry barrier of the automation tool. If your testers don’t have sufficient testing background, you’d better consider the tools that don’t require coding.
• Reusability and maintainability
  Make sure your test scripts are reusable, maintainable, and resistant to changes in the application’s UI
• Integration with your ecosystem
  The tool should integrate with your existing ecosystem: CI\CD pipeline (Jenkins, Azure DevOps), Jira, Git etc.

5) Create a quality test data

Creating quality test data for automated testing is a crucial aspect of ensuring your testing process is both efficient and effective. One of the best QA practices is to carefully design and organize your test data, considering the various types of data such as text, dates, prices, and more. It’s essential to ensure that the data is easy to understand, concise, and well-structured, as this will allow your automation tool to interpret it correctly.

Incorporating QA practices like creating realistic and representative test data can significantly improve the reliability of your automated tests. Properly structured data not only enhances the accuracy of your testing outcomes but also makes it easier to identify and rectify any issues that arise during the testing phase. By focusing on creating high-quality test data, you can adhere to best QA practices, ultimately leading to more robust and reliable software products.

Here are some criteria of good test data:

1. Accuracy.
   It should be realistic and close to the real-time situation. You can find either find historic data or take the data from the future. Ensure that the dates are realistic, with the right days of the week, months, and years.
2. Validity.
   The data should correspond to the purpose of your tool. For example, if you have a retail shop, don’t test impossible scenarios where the user would buy 100 items.
3. Exceptions data.
   Test data should be created with the intention of testing all the different scenarios that could happen during a user’s experience. When creating test data, make sure to include all the different types of exceptions. For example, if you want to test that a user received a coupon code for their next purchase, you need to make sure that you have a data set that includes this scenario

6) Make sure your automated tests are resistant to UI changes

When implementing automated tests, it’s crucial to follow the best QA practices to ensure they are effective and maintainable. One key aspect is making your automated tests resistant to UI changes. UI updates are inevitable as your application evolves, and these changes can cause your automated tests to fail if not designed with flexibility in mind.

To achieve this, it’s important to create automation tests that are more generic and less dependent on the specific UI elements. For example, instead of hardcoding location coordinates or specific UI elements, consider using relative identifiers or logical groupings. This approach aligns with the best QA practices, as it enhances the resilience of your tests against minor UI modifications.

Additionally, when your test scripts need to be more precise, ensure that your input parameters are detailed enough to maintain test integrity. This could involve making control names unique and descriptive, which supports robust automated testing. By following these QA practices, you can significantly reduce the risk of your tests breaking due to UI changes and maintain a high level of test accuracy and reliability.

7) Use test design patterns and principles

When you are creating test automation scripts, it’s essential to incorporate best QA practices to ensure the scripts are not only functional but also reliable and maintainable. One of the most effective approaches is using test design patterns and principles. These patterns serve as reusable solutions to common problems encountered in test automation, helping testers create scripts that are both efficient and adaptable to different testing environments.

QA practices that emphasize the use of design patterns can significantly enhance test data management and streamline the configuration of test automation tools. Just as software developers rely on design patterns to create reusable code across various projects, testers can leverage these patterns to optimize their testing processes, ensuring consistency and reliability in their automation efforts.

Regularly review and update your automated tests to ensure they stay relevant as your application evolves. Outdated tests can lead to false positives and missed issues.

Mikhail Bodnarchuk

CDO, ZappleTech Inc.

Here are four basic test design patterns:

1. Page Objects

This pattern separates the application’s business logic from the application’s behavior. When you design your automation scripts, you can wrap each of your page objects and then use them as a template for your automation scripts. This means you can reuse your business logic and your automation scripts.

2. Screenplay Pattern

You can create a screenplay pattern using a tool such as a table-driven test case, a pre-defined set of scenarios, or a set of pre-defined inputs and outputs. You need to make sure that your automation script is flexible enough to adapt to the inputs changes made by the user of the system.

3. Ports and Adapters

Ports and adapters are also a great way to improve your automation script writing. Instead of writing out individual procedures, you can reuse those procedures and make your script more reliable

4. Presenter First

Presenter First is a pattern that begins with a fully functional test case and then moves to automate the test case. It also includes the creation of a presenter that is logically structured that is then used with the functional test case to ensure that the output of the functional test case will produce the expected results

8) Separate your tests from the test automation framework

9) Make your automation framework portable

Ensuring the portability of your automation framework is crucial for maintaining a robust and efficient QA process. Portability, as one of the best QA practices, allows your framework to be easily transferred and executed across different systems, environments, and platforms without requiring extensive modifications. This adaptability is particularly valuable in diverse development environments where consistency and reliability are paramount.

By making your automation framework portable, you not only reduce the likelihood of encountering environment-specific issues, but you also streamline the testing process. This approach minimizes the time and effort required to set up and maintain your framework in various settings, allowing your QA team to focus more on testing and less on troubleshooting compatibility issues.

Another significant advantage of implementing these QA practices is the enhanced scalability of your testing framework. A portable framework can easily be integrated into new projects, enabling your team to expand and adapt to evolving testing needs without being bogged down by technical debt. This flexibility ensures that your QA practices remain agile and responsive to changes in project requirements, ultimately contributing to the overall success of your software development lifecycle.

Furthermore, a portable automation framework can improve collaboration among different teams, especially in distributed environments where team members may be working on different operating systems or configurations. With a portable framework, all teams can utilize the same testing tools and methodologies, leading to more consistent results and a unified approach to quality assurance.

10) Simplify the tests instead of adding the comments

When writing test automation code, adhering to best QA practices is crucial to ensure that the tests are both effective and maintainable. One of the key principles in these practices is to keep the code clear and simple, making it easy for others to understand and modify. If you find yourself relying on comments to explain what a section of code does, this is often a signal that the code itself could be simplified.

Simplifying the tests rather than adding comments not only improves readability but also enhances the overall quality of your QA process. Complex code with extensive comments can be a sign of underlying issues, such as unnecessary complexity or poor structure. By focusing on clear and straightforward code, you reduce the cognitive load on anyone reading or maintaining the test automation, which is a fundamental aspect of QA practices.

Another important aspect of following best QA practices is minimizing the use of variables in your tests. Each variable introduces another element that the reader must keep track of, which can complicate understanding the code. When you limit the number of variables, the logic of the test becomes more transparent, making it easier to follow and reducing the likelihood of errors. If a line of code seems unclear without a comment, it’s often a sign that the code needs to be refactored. This approach not only aligns with best practices but also fosters a culture of quality and precision in your QA efforts.

In addition to simplifying the code and minimizing variables, another best practice is to use meaningful and descriptive names for functions, methods, and variables. When names clearly convey their purpose, the need for comments is further reduced, and the test code becomes self-documenting. This aligns perfectly with the philosophy of QA practices, where clarity and simplicity are paramount.

Conclusion

We hope you found our article on automation testing practices insightful and valuable for your testing initiatives. Implementing the best QA practices is not just about following guidelines—it’s about creating a testing environment that continuously improves and adapts to new challenges. Whether you’re dealing with large-scale enterprise applications or smaller projects, the right QA practices can make all the difference in delivering high-quality software on time.

Embed your test automation into your Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment pipeline. This ensures tests run automatically with every code change, catching issues early and frequently.

Sergey Almyashev

COO, ZappleTech Inc.

Effective test automation isn’t just a one-time setup; it requires ongoing attention to detail, regular updates, and a strategic approach to ensure that your testing efforts remain efficient and aligned with your project goals. This is where our expertise can be particularly beneficial. Our team is well-versed in the latest tools and methodologies, and we’re here to help you navigate the complexities of automation testing.

If you’re looking to enhance your QA practices, whether by refining your current processes or by implementing a new automation strategy from the ground up, we’re here to assist you. Feel free to reach out and book a free consultation with our specialists. We’ll provide you with tailored recommendations that align with your project’s unique requirements, helping you achieve the best possible outcomes.