Feedback is important in software development cycle, which is technically termed as software testing. Since the adoption of continuous integration and agile processes, it has become critical to ensure faster feedback to match the speed of continuous delivery. Well, here faster feedback is implied by test automation which allows you to identify regression bugs during code commit and fix problems as soon as they appear. With faster feedback through automated testing, you can produce reusable test and run them timely and again to save on costs and avoid repeated manual work. This is why it is key to decide on areas to automate testing. This post will suggest some of those areas as Automation Testing Best Practice.
According to the survey ‘State of Testing Report – 2016’ conducted by the QA Intelligence in association with PractiTest and Tea Time with Testers, 86% of the respondents (1000 participants of software testing industry from 60 countries) agreed on using automation in their testing projects.
Apparently, the power of automation testing lies in the fact that it frees up resources and runs tests on autopilot allowing teams to focus on important tasks. However, many enterprises and QA managers like you do not adopt test automation, either assuming it to be complicated or being ignorant about practical implications and applications of test automation.
To help you understand the real essence and implication of automation, here’s a list of 3 areas to automate testing where it can be applied for maximising effectiveness of testing.
1. Regression Testing
As an application evolves in its lifecycle, you don’t want to simply pass the test cases, but maintain the old test cases and ensure that the existing features are working as expected along with new features. Thus, during every new feature addition, you need to test the previous functionality repeatedly. In this area, regression automation testing helps execute repeated test cases without manual intervention, saving thousands of dollars, time and efforts.
2. Continuous Integration
In a continuous integration cycle, an application undergoes minor changes and released to production on a daily or weekly basis. Of course, the code commits bring in chances of errors which is why testing becomes an important part of the process before released to the production phase. Automating this area can help you test the application as and when the code gets updated automatically, leaving no chance to slip on to the verification of new codes. Test automation in the continuous integration cycle also ensures optimum coverage while eliminating the chances of human errors.
3. Functional & GUI Testing
Functional and GUI testing are the most common part of software testing. However, with a series of integrations, technologies, browsers and platforms being updated every now and then, it becomes obvious to test the application against each of them to ensure the functional and UI aspects are not affected. Functional and UI Test automation here can help perform the desired iteration and test the application across a number of devices, resolutions, platforms, and technologies which otherwise is difficult in manual testing.
Find out more of the areas you should be automating here
