The quality of software applications has become a differentiator for business enterprises that want to stay competitive or risk becoming obsolete. Automation testing has been one of the most transformative digital initiatives for enterprises looking to work smarter and deliver more in less time. However, writing automation test scripts for complex and sophisticated enterprise solutions can be a challenge for testers.
Further, in today’s remote and distributed working environments, IT teams have a lot on their plate. These include a long list of changes to be made to the build, a humongous volume of data to integrate, products to launch, and reports to analyze, among others. This often creates a long cycle of ideation, development, and testing, necessitating businesses to onboard more automation test engineers. As a result, the process may become more time- and cost-intensive. So, is there an easy solution to address the issue?
The answer to this problem is in using scriptless test automation. This is similar to using RPA solutions, wherein teams can execute a plethora of testing activities using clicks. A low code automation platform allows testers to create and deploy automation scripts using interfaces with drag-and-drop methods. Understandably, this reduces the time and effort required to execute test automation, increases accuracy and test coverage, and simplifies the process even further.
The codeless automation testing tools offered by such a platform enable testers to create automation scripts for a wide range of test environments and scenarios. Also, they allow multiple testers to collaborate, thereby enhancing efficiency and productivity. With such scriptless test automation tools gaining currency among testers, let us first understand what low code automation is all about.
What Is Low Code Automation?
Low code automation refers to the use of tools to automate business processes with little or no coding. Here, test cases written in simple text language enable even non-technical business stakeholders to understand the automation tasks, thereby improving communication and transparency. A low-code, self-healing test automation platform democratizes the process of generating automated test scripts and removes the common barriers hindering timely software releases. It fosters DevOps-based cloud-centric automation, thereby shortening the SDLC and hastening the launch of software products. According to Gartner, low- code building and testing of applications will cover more than 65 percent of all applications by the year 2024.
5 Ways a Low Code Automation Platform Can Transform Test Automation
Test automation with a low code platform can revolutionize test automation in the following ways:
- Facilitate the BDD approach: BDD or Behavior Driven Development focuses on developing features based on the application’s behavior and user acceptance criteria. It is about writing code to develop solutions to real problems. The BDD approach aligns the requirements between agile teams and business stakeholders, such as managers, product owners, and others. The BDD approach to automated testing involves customer-facing scenarios representing distinct user behaviors. BDD facilitates the transition from functional to automated testing using a simple text-based language instead of a complicated test script.
- Enables Agile Testers to Focus on Exploratory Testing: Exploratory testing focuses on the guidance of individual testers to detect issues or vulnerabilities that are not easily possible to detect otherwise. It allows testers to learn new strategies and execute a greater number of tests. Since exploratory tests are cyclical, they cannot be automated. So, agile testers using no code testing tools can create complex test suites in a jiffy and spend more time performing exploratory testing. This can ensure wider test coverage and better UAT testing.
- Instant Test Designing, Scripting, and Execution: A low code automation platform can promote true collaboration among multiple stakeholders. It can capture the sequence of a tester’s actions and generate a test script in plain English, automatically. Also, a user-friendly web application, allows QA specialists to create and maintain test scripts and other artifacts. The platform for codeless automation testing offers test orchestration to generate automated test scripts with the capability to handle sensitive data. With a provision for loops, smart conditions, and custom functions, the platform can help testers generate a codeless test script.
The low code automation platform can execute cross-platform testing of applications either simultaneously or sequentially, based on a predetermined schedule. It supports continuous testing by allowing the integration of the test execution engine with the latest CI/CD and cloud infrastructure.
- Enhance Scalability and Reusability: Platforms providing self-healing test automation tools enable testers to easily scale and expand their automation efforts by developing and deploying new automation scripts or modifying existing ones. Further, they allow the reuse of automation scripts, saving time and effort. They also have APIs that allow integration with a wide range of applications. This way, such tools enhance compatibility and enable testers to automate processes across different test environments.
- Minimize Technical Debts: Scriptless test automation tools enable the integration of processes and third-party software tools and applications. By developing a system that aligns and drives teams towards delivering projects on time, the low-code approach can help reduce technical debt. These tools provide an automation layer between the underlying technology and business logic, making it easier for developers to build applications faster. AI test automation tools can create a culture of continuous refactoring, monitor and improve the right metrics, and treat the root cause of an issue or vulnerability.
Conclusion
A low code automation platform provides testers with a lot of functionalities to generate automated test suites. It allows them to focus more on adding business value by executing exploratory testing than by performing actual testing. Business enterprises can consider such platforms to achieve a host of benefits, including reducing the learning curve for testing, enabling a quick ramp-up, and increasing test coverage and accuracy, among others.
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