When to Go for Automation Testing and How to Avoid Common Mistakes

Introduction

Automation testing is the process that helps in improving test coverage, finding bugs and identifying bottlenecks. It helps the team to identify inefficiencies and makes the team more efficient and more productive, saves money, time, and effort. Test automation process is not as simple as it looks.

Test automation has multiple benefits that help in the testing of the applications and also make the test engineers’ work easier. It is important to use automation correctly so that it could really improve the working processes in the application, but not be a waste of money.

This blog will help the reader to understand what automation testing is, when to go for it, and most importantly, when not to go for it.

When to use automation software testing?

There are many reasons to use automated software testing. It can be employed for testing, validation, and quality assurance, significantly improving productivity. Here are some factors to consider when to go for automation testing:

• Project Size: If you are working on a big project that is impossible to test manually.
• Test Volume: If you have to run a large number of test cases during a single test cycle.
• Manual Testing Limitations: If you are not able to perform all the test cases manually.
• Cross-Platform Testing: If you have to test the software on several browsers, operating systems, or environments at a time.
• Data-Intensive Testing: If you have to use a large amount of data for testing.

Understanding these automation testing requirements will greatly increase the efficiency of your business processes. Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of implementing automated software testing in your project.

Cutting the costs

Automation can save you a lot of time and money. Unlike manual testing, it’s also possible to scale automation testing and reuse scripts when you’re testing multiple projects. As a result, it can be seen as a way of improving your business. However, it’s impossible to run automation testing for free. You need to know when automation testing is the best option for your project.

A general rule is that you should use automation testing as long as you can save money and still deliver a quality product. The timing of the project plays a crucial role in deciding when to go for automation testing. If it is a one-time project, automating may not be reasonable. However, if the project is a long-term one, automation can significantly cut development costs, provided you also consider the time and quality of the product.

Understanding the specific automation testing requirements of your project is essential. This involves assessing the complexity of the tasks, the frequency of tests, and the resources available. By carefully evaluating these factors, you can determine when automation testing will be most beneficial for your business.

For instance, repetitive tasks that need consistent execution are prime candidates for automation. By automating these tasks, you not only save on labor costs but also minimize human error, thereby enhancing the overall quality of the product. Additionally, automation is highly effective for regression testing, where the same tests need to be run multiple times to ensure that new code changes do not disrupt existing functionality.

Opt for automation testing when you have tests that need to be run frequently and consistently, such as regression tests. Automating these tests saves time, reduces human error, and ensures consistent results across multiple test runs.

Mikhail Bodnarchuk

CDO, ZappleTech Inc.

It’s also important to consider the initial setup costs for automation. While the upfront investment may be higher compared to manual testing, the long-term savings can be substantial. The key is to analyze the return on investment (ROI) and determine if the initial costs will be outweighed by the benefits over time.

Moreover, automation testing tools are continuously evolving, offering more sophisticated features that can handle complex scenarios. Leveraging these tools effectively can give your business a competitive edge by ensuring faster delivery cycles and higher product reliability.

Ultimately, knowing when to go for automation testing and understanding your automation testing requirements can lead to significant improvements in efficiency and cost-effectiveness. By strategically implementing automation, you can enhance your testing processes and deliver high-quality products to market faster.

Automating frequent and repetitive tests

Testing is an essential part of the software development lifecycle, allowing teams to identify and address issues early in the development process. Automating frequent and repetitive tests significantly enhances this process by enabling faster and more comprehensive testing. Automated testing is not only quicker but also reduces the potential for human error, ensuring more consistent and accurate results.

When to go for automation testing? The answer lies in the nature of the tests themselves. Automation is particularly beneficial for tests that need to be executed repeatedly or are too complex for manual testing. This includes regression tests, load tests, and performance tests. By automating these tests, development teams can run them more frequently, thus identifying and addressing issues early and often.

Understanding the automation testing requirements is crucial to implementing a successful testing strategy. This involves selecting the right tools, frameworks, and scripts to automate tests efficiently. Proper planning and design of test cases are also necessary to ensure that the automated tests are effective and provide accurate results.

By automating repeated tests, teams can ensure that tests are run consistently and efficiently. This proactive approach to testing helps in spotting issues as they arise, rather than reacting to problems only after they have been reported by users. This increased efficiency not only improves the reliability of the software but also speeds up its delivery, ultimately enhancing the overall quality of the product.

Saving time

Improving the quality

The first step in improving the quality of your software is by automating testing of the core customer experience. Test automation will help you prevent bugs from making it to production. You can configure the tests to constantly check if the software is running smoothly and flawlessly.

With test automation, you will also be able to compare the expected results to what you see in real life. If you find that it isn’t, then you can make changes accordingly to solve the issue. This continuous feedback loop ensures that any deviations from expected behavior are caught and corrected promptly, leading to a more reliable and robust software product.

Improving the quality of your software through automated testing involves several key steps. First, you need to determine when to go for automation testing. This decision is typically based on the complexity of the tests, the frequency with which they need to be run, and the criticality of the components being tested. Automated testing is especially advantageous for regression tests, load tests, and any other repetitive tasks that require consistent and thorough verification.

Next, it’s essential to understand the automation testing requirements. This includes selecting the appropriate tools and frameworks, designing comprehensive test cases, and developing scripts that can accurately simulate user interactions and system responses. Meeting these requirements ensures that your automated tests are effective and reliable, providing meaningful insights into the software’s performance and stability.

By automating repeated tests, teams can ensure that tests are run consistently and efficiently. This proactive approach to testing helps in spotting issues as they arise, rather than reacting to problems only after they have been reported by users. This increased efficiency not only improves the reliability of the software but also speeds up its delivery, ultimately enhancing the overall quality of the product.

Moreover, automated testing allows for more extensive coverage of different scenarios and edge cases. This comprehensive approach to testing helps identify potential issues that might be overlooked in manual testing, leading to higher-quality software. Automated tests can be run as part of the continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipeline, ensuring that any new changes are automatically tested and validated before being merged into the main codebase.

Running multiple tests at once

Test Automation software allows you to run multiple tests simultaneously, increasing the efficiency of the testing process by a significant amount. For example, if you have a test script that takes three hours to run on your regular test server, you can run the same test script in under a minute on a test server that is dedicated to running tests.

The test automation software has a built-in scheduler, allowing you to schedule tests to run at specific times or at random intervals. This flexibility ensures that testing can be integrated seamlessly into the development process, running during off-peak hours or even continuously. Additionally, the software includes a built-in reporting system, enabling you to see the results of every test run in detail. This reporting functionality helps in quickly identifying issues and tracking the progress of the testing efforts.

Running multiple tests at once is a significant advantage of automated testing. This capability allows teams to perform extensive testing in a fraction of the time it would take to conduct the same tests manually. When to go for automation testing is particularly relevant in scenarios where large-scale testing is required, and time is of the essence. Automated testing enables parallel execution, where multiple test cases can be run concurrently, thus maximizing resource utilization and reducing overall test execution time.

Understanding the automation testing requirements is crucial for effectively running multiple tests simultaneously. This involves setting up the test environment correctly, ensuring that the infrastructure can support parallel test execution, and selecting tools that can manage concurrent test runs without performance degradation. Proper configuration and resource allocation are key to leveraging the full potential of automated testing.

Improving the quality of your software through automated testing involves automating the core customer experience tests. This helps in preventing bugs from reaching production and ensures that the software operates smoothly. Automated tests can be configured to run continuously, providing constant validation of the software’s performance against expected outcomes. Any discrepancies can be quickly identified and addressed, leading to a more stable and reliable product.

By automating repeated tests, teams can ensure that tests are run consistently and efficiently. This proactive approach to testing helps in spotting issues as they arise, rather than reacting to problems only after they have been reported by users. This increased efficiency not only improves the reliability of the software but also speeds up its delivery, ultimately enhancing the overall quality of the product.

Using multiple data sets for a single testing scenario

When to go for automation testing often depends on the complexity and volume of the data sets involved. In some software components, software testers must run the same test cases with multiple data sets. For instance, data sets generated from different sources such as Excel or text files.

If the software tester needs to conduct the test case with multiple data sets, they must collect the data files, sort the data sets as needed, compile them in the right order, and prepare the software package for test case execution. This task can be tedious and time-consuming, highlighting the importance of understanding automation testing requirements.

To work with multiple data sets effectively, software testers can use a test automation tool like QTP. This tool automates the execution of test cases with various data sets, streamlining the process. The automation tool runs the test case with the data sets automatically, allowing software testers to review the results and make necessary adjustments efficiently. This approach not only saves time but also enhances accuracy and consistency in testing outcomes.

Ensure your test scripts are well-maintained and updated alongside code changes. Neglecting script maintenance can lead to false positives and outdated tests, reducing the effectiveness of your automation efforts. Regularly review and refactor test scripts to keep them relevant and efficient.

Sergey Almyashev

COO, ZappleTech Inc.

Common automation testing mistakes

Adopting software test automation is becoming increasingly popular, but it can be difficult to avoid making mistakes. It can be hard to know what to automate, and when to automate. In order to avoid the mistakes mentioned below, it is important to have a clear understanding of where the automation should be implemented. The mistakes mentioned below can cause the automation to fail, impacting ROI.

1) Starting without a pre-defined scope of testing

A key step in performing a test is to define the scope. It can be as broad or as narrow as needed. However, it is important to understand the scope of testing that needs to be performed before starting the execution.

This knowledge can help to ensure that the right resources are being used, and the right time is being given to properly execute the test. In order to avoid confusion, it is important to have the scope of the test defined before the test is executed.

2) Starting without a test plan

In software testing, a test plan is essential. It guides the person responsible for performing the test in the best possible way. It is important to have a plan to make sure that the tests are conducted in an organized and efficient way. It also helps to have a plan to keep track of the test iterations.

In order to create a test plan, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with the test. Once you have the idea, you can document it and then make your planning document. The plan should be based on a number of things, including the test objective, test scenarios, resources required, time required and approach being taken.

3) Ignoring the CI/CD Pipeline

Automated tests are an important part of any software development process. By integrating test automation with the CI/CD pipeline, you can ensure that your tests are being executed during your build process, which will help you to continuously improve the quality of your software.

To integrate test automation with the CI/CD pipeline, it’s important that the tests are run from a single data set. This means that your tests are created to use the same data set that you’ll use for the pipeline. If you have multiple data sets for your tests, it’s important that they all use the same structure.

4) Testing with similar kinds of datasets

When you are testing a product, it can be hard to get an accurate representation of what the product will be like in the real world. For example, a business might be looking to test their new website to see how it performs on their server. However, the testing of the website might not be realistic if it is just tested on its own server.

What they could do is use a few different data sets in order to test the website. One data set might be from their server, and the other data set might be from a completely different server. This is a way to test the website in a more realistic way.

5) Ignoring Code Reusability

Reusability has become an important topic in software development, especially with the advent of test automation. Code It is essentially the practice of taking code that has already been developed and using it in a new project.

This way, the time and effort that are invested in creating the code are not wasted. Testing automation is often used as a tool for reusability, but it can be used for other purposes as well.

6) Attempting to Replace Manual Testing

It is important that you know that automated testing is not a replacement for manual testing. Using automated testing to replace manual testing can have a negative impact on the quality and reliability of software. It is always important to remember that manual testing is still necessary, in order to make sure automation is utilized correctly

Conclusion

We hope you enjoyed our blog post on the mistakes in software test automation. Software test automation has great benefits for both the product owner and the test engineers, but it is important that it be used correctly. Knowing when to go for automation testing can significantly impact the efficiency and success of your testing process.

Understanding the specific automation testing requirements for your project ensures that you implement the right tools and strategies, avoiding common pitfalls and maximizing the advantages of automation. Proper planning, choosing the right automation framework, and continuously monitoring the performance of your automation tests are essential steps in this process.

When deciding on automation testing, consider the complexity and repetitiveness of the test cases. Automated tests are ideal for scenarios where manual testing would be too time-consuming or prone to human error. Additionally, evaluating the cost-effectiveness of automation for your specific project can help you make informed decisions.

Automation is ideal for testing critical paths and high-risk areas of your application where failures could have severe consequences. Automated tests can quickly identify issues in these crucial sections, ensuring they are addressed promptly.

Mykhailo Poliarush

CEO, ZappleTech Inc.

If you have any questions about software test automation, contact our team for a free consultation. We would love to hear from you! Our experts can help you navigate the challenges of automation testing, ensuring that you get the most out of your investment in automated testing tools and practices.