Automation testing is a process before its release into production that validates if the software product is functioning appropriately and meeting requirements. This software testing method uses scripted sequences that execute by testing tools.
For your product to be as good as you want it to be, it is crucial to include it in the product development cycle.
Testing is now more sophisticated and advanced than ever. We have started using automation testing to ease the workload of the rest of the QA team as well as provide clear and accurate results.
In this article, let us go into more detail about automation testing, including what it is, its testing types, and how to start implementing it in your company.
According to Global Market Insights, The automation market was worth USD 20 billion in 2022, with a CAGR of more than 15% between 2023 and 2032. The increasing use of digital media will augment business growth.
Why Automation Testing?
Every software development group tests its final products, yet delivered software always has defects. Automation test engineers strive to catch them before the software product is released, however, they always creep in and they often reappear even with the initial manual testing process. Test Automation software is the best way to increase the effectiveness, efficiency, and coverage of your software testing.
Manual software testing is performed by manual human activity in front of a computer going through application screens, trying various usage and input combinations, comparing the detailed test results to the expected behavior, and recording their observations.
The initial Manual testing process repeats during development cycles for source code changes and other situations like multiple operating environments and hardware configurations.
An automated testing tool can playback pre-recorded and predefined actions, compare the results to the expected behavior, and report the success or failure of these manual tests to an automation test engineer. Once automated tests are created, they are simple to repeat and can be expanded to carry out tasks that manual testing is unable to perform. Because of this, savvy managers have found automation software testing an essential component of successful development projects.
Automated software testing has long been considered critical for big software development organizations but is often thought to be too expensive or difficult for smaller companies to implement.
Automation Testing Process
An organization can apply automated tests to a broad range of cases, such as unit, API, and regression testing. The main benefit of Automated software testing is that it simplifies as much of the manual effort as possible into a set of scripts.
For example, if unit testing consumes a large percentage of a quality assurance (QA) team resources then this process should be evaluated as a candidate for automation. You can perform automation testing at any time of day.
This approach fits in with continuous testing, continuous integration (CI), and continuous delivery (CD) software development processes, which aim to shuttle code changes to production without gates that require manual intervention.
Below are the following steps in an automation process:
Step 1: Choosing A Testing Tool
We have gone over the various forms of automation testing. Choose the option that best meets your needs right now. For instance, you might be more likely to use software code analysis automation testing if your objective is to find a specific software bug.
There are many test automation tools and web applications available on the market, including Selenium IDE, WebDriver, UFT, Ranorex, Cucumber, and Appium. You should be able to access some of them on Microsoft, and many of them provide usage instructions. Even some are open source. Therefore, you must comprehend each tool and how it might help your automation testing process.
Step 2: Identify The Scope of the Automation
The scope of automation is the part of your application under test that will be automated. The following points help to determine the scope of automation:
- The essential qualities of the business.
- Scenarios with a large amount of data.
- Across-application functionalities.
- Technological feasibility.
- The reused fraction of business components.
- The difficulty of the test cases.
- The ability to apply the same test cases for cross-browser testing.
Step 3: Design, Planning, and Development.
As the title indicates, you make a plan, design the architecture, and develop a strategy in this phase to accomplish the objective of test automation.
- Test Plan: Creation of test standards and procedures, as well as hardware, software, and test data requirements.
- Test Design: Create the test architecture to evaluate the flow of the subsequent test procedures.
- Test Strategy: Choose a suitable test automation framework.
Step 4: The Test Execution
This step involves executing the test scripts to see if they function correctly or not. This step ensures that everything is functional and cross-platform compatible. If the test case fails, you should also create a bug report.
Step 5: Overall Maintenance
Test Automation Maintenance Approach is an automation testing phase used to determine whether newly added software functionalities are working effectively or not. When new automation scripts are added, they should be reviewed and maintained to increase their effectiveness with each successive release cycle. It is during the maintenance of automation testing.
Automation Framework
A framework is a set of automation standards that assist in:
- Maintaining the consistency of the testing.
- Improves the test structure.
- Coding at minimum.
- Less code maintenance.
- Enhance reusability.
- Non-technical testers are capable of working with code.
- The tool’s learning curve can be shortened.
- Uses Data whenever possible.
In automation software testing, there are four types of frameworks:
- Data-Driven Automation.
- Keyword-driven automation.
- Modular automation.
- Hybrid automation.
Automation Testing Tools
Following are the different types of test automation frameworks:
1) ACCELQ
ACCELQ is an AI-powered Codeless Test Automation platform on the cloud that seamlessly automates Web UI, API, Mobile, and Desktop. ACCELQ customers are Fortune 500 enterprises across industry verticals globally, and they have adopted ACCELQ to accelerate their automation objectives significantly.
ACCELQ is proven to speed up automation development by three times and bring down maintenance by 70% which translates to over 50% of cost savings and enables alignment with Continuous Delivery.
2) Avo Assure
Avo Assure is a 100% no-code and intelligent test automation solution. It supports over 200 technologies and enables you to test complex, end-to-end business processes spanning web, mobile, desktop, Mainframes, SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, and more.
3) testRigor
testRigor is a no-code tool that enables manual QA testers to create complex automated tests using only plain English commands. Seamlessly create end-to-end tests for Web UI, Native and Hybrid Mobile apps, mobile browsers, and APIs.
4) TestComplete
TestComplete is a GUI test automation tool that tests every desktop, web, and mobile application and is used by both technical and non-technical users.
5) Subject7
Subject7 is a cloud-based, “true codeless” test automation solution that unifies all testing in a single platform and empowers anyone to become an automation expert. This easy-to-use software accelerates test authoring, reduces test maintenance, and scales effortlessly.
6) Virtuoso
Virtuoso leverages AI to automate your end-2-end testing without code, even on the most dynamic apps. Build functional tests using Natural Language Programming (plain English like you would write a manual test script), integrated API testing, and Visual Regression tests to get complete codeless end-2-end detailed test coverage.
Virtuoso’s Intelligent Object Identification uses AI to inspect the DOM and find all element selectors from simple hints and is self-maintaining.
7) ZeuZ
ZeuZ Automation is an AI-assisted click-and-test automation testing framework that testers enjoy using! It’s scriptless and simple for manual testers, but also robust, with all-in-one new features desired by experts.
Equipped with CI/CD integration, intelligent debugging, rich reporting, and collaboration with new features, ZeuZ delivers on the promise of true end-to-end automation.
8) QA Wolf
QA Wolf offers zero-effort automated QA. They are the first solution that gets teams to 80% automated end-to-end test coverage in 4 months – regardless of the number of tests required. QA Wolf costs 86% less than an in-house team and saves $50,000/year in infrastructure alone.
9) Tenjin Online
Tenjin Online is a 5th generation, codeless, SaaS-based solution to efficiently test web, Android, and iOS applications with ease. With multiple usability features and new functionalities, the platform does not require critical configuration or skills and assures testing applications from anywhere, anytime.
Further, pre-integrated software tools like JIRA and Device Farms make test tracking and management easier and device farms like BrowserStack and SauceLabs provide access to a wide range of devices on the Cloud.
10) Selenium
Selenium is an open-source web automation tool that is currently in demand and widely used tool in the market. It is one of the best QA automation tools that can automate across multiple OS Like Windows, Mac, and Linux and browsers like Firefox, Chrome, and IE, as well as Headless Browsers.
How Can Enterprises Utilize Automation?
- Set up automated email campaigns.
- Create standard operating procedures (SOPs).
- Upload contact data to a CRM for a centralized database.
- Implement a lead scoring system.
- Use a social media scheduling tool.
- Immediately respond to customer service requests.
- Automate SMS marketing messages.
Which Tests Should Be Automated?
- Unit Tests.
- Functional Tests.
- Regression Tests.
- Smoke Tests.
- Data-driven Tests.
- Performance Tests.
What Are The Types of Automation Testing?
- Keyword-driven testing.
- Integration testing.
- Unit testing.
- Smoke testing.
- Regression testing.
- Performance testing.
- Security testing.
- Data-driven testing.
Code Analysis
It is the analysis of source code, that is performed without actually executing programs. It involves the detection of vulnerabilities and functional errors in deployed or soon-to-be-deployed software.
Unit Tests
The unit test is a software testing technique used in computer programming to evaluate the suitability of individual units of source code, and sets of one or more computer program modules, along with the associated control data, usage procedures, and operating procedures.
Integration Tests
Integration testing is the second level of the software testing process that comes after unit testing. In this type of testing, units or individual components of the software are tested in a group. The focus of the integration testing level is to expose defects at the time of interaction between integrated components or units.
Automated Accepted Tests
Similar to behavior-driven development (BDD) and automated acceptance test-driven development, automated accepted tests (AAT) (AATDD). Before the development of a new feature, the acceptance test is created. It usually involves collaboration between developers, the business, and better quality assurance (QA) and establishes a standard for the feature to meet. They can also be applied as regression tests in the future.
Smoke Tests
Smoke testing determines whether the product is stable. If it isn’t, it is returned to the developers with the designation “unstable build.” Then, if additional testing is required, they can determine what caused the issue in the first place.
Benefits of Automation Testing
Automated Testing Saves Time and Money
Software tests have to be repeated often during development cycles to ensure better quality. Software tests repeat every time the source code is modified. Each release of the software, tests all supported operating systems and hardware configurations.
Manually repeating these tests is costly and time-consuming. Once created, automation testing can run over and over again at no additional cost and they are much faster than manual tests. Automated software testing isn’t time-consuming to run repetitive tests from days to hours. A time-saving method that also results in cost savings.
Vastly Increases Your Test Coverage
Automated software testing can increase the depth and scope of tests to help improve software quality. Lengthy tests that are often avoided during manual testing can be run unattended. They run on multiple computers with different configurations.
Automated software testing can look inside an application and see memory contents, data tables, file contents, and internal program states to determine if the software product is behaving as expected. Test automation focuses on executing thousands of complex test cases during every earlier test run providing coverage that is impossible with manual tests.
Testing Improves Accuracy
Even the most conscientious tester will make mistakes during monotonous manual testing. Automated tests perform the same steps precisely every time they execute and never forget to record detailed results. Testers freed from repetitive manual tests have more time to create new automated software tests and deal with complex new features.
Automation Does What Manual Testing Cannot
Even the largest software and QA departments cannot perform a controlled web application test data with thousands of users. Automation testing can simulate tens, hundreds, or thousands of virtual users interacting with a network, software, and web applications.
Automation Testing Helps software Developers and Testers
Automation developers use shared automated tests to catch errors quickly before sending them to QA. Tests can run automatically whenever source code changes are checked in and notify the team or the automation developer if they fail. New features like these save automation developers time and increase their confidence.
QA and Dev Team Morale Improves
Executing repetitive tasks with automated software testing gives your team time to spend on more challenging and rewarding large projects in less time. Team members improve their skill sets and confidence and, in turn, pass those gains on to their organization.
Several different types of software tests can be automated
- Unit Testing
- Functional Testing
- Regression Testing
- Black Box Testing
- Integration Testing
- Keyword Testing
- Data-Driven Testing
- Smoke Testing
Conclusion
While automated testing has been considered essential for both large and small organizations to implement to deliver outstanding software and stay competitive in the industry, it can be tough to get started.
Outlining an effective roadmap, building robust testing frameworks, choosing the specific tools, and measuring the potential monetary impact that automation could have on your delivery lifecycle are all critical components of any successful automated testing strategy, but each step presents its challenges and costs.
