A Comprehensive Guide to Agile Test Automation
Tags: agiletestautomation, testgrid
Published: 2024-05-20 09:23:43

Agile Test Automation seems to be a buzzword for finding ways to automate any part of a user story. But what exactly is it?
It is evident that automation testing heavily benefits and smoothens out the application development life cycle. Despite that, if automation testing is not executed correctly, it could lead to application failure. Here we are with 8 ways how you can make sure that is not the case with you and can help you use automation testing favorably while using the agile development approach.

## End-to-End Testing on real iOS, Android Devices & Browsers

### Run parallel testing
Agile testing with automation often doesn’t work out in the best way because agile development is a continuous delivery process with fewer repetitions during development and deployment. That leads to QA teams running short and quick regression testing which in turn makes it more tedious for the testers to find, fix and test the product. The solution to this is giving enough time to any kind of testing which includes automation testing too this can be done by running multiple parallel tests to save time and it also ends up improving the team’s morale and productivity, better quality, and your testers might also end up saving enough to time to debug and do more exploratory testing.

### Create Quality Tests
The importance of quality tests isn’t news to anyone, building strong and powerful test scripts that can be combined with regression testing effortlessly. The test scripts may be scripted or script but the one thing that must be affirmative is the flexibility of it to adapt to the long-term requirements. There are other criteria that the test script must also meet and they are as follows:

- Portability
- Maintainability
- Accuracy
- Visioning
- Performance
- Integrity
Once these criteria are met to perform automatic regression testing, it will turn out to be extremely effortless and have high precision without the inference of humans and QAs can commence regression testing without going through avoidable alterations.

### Adapt DevOps Integration
DevOps is a primary element of the essentials for an agile development team. It plays a chief role in merging the development, testing, and operational roles. DevOps provides crucial benefits such as collaboration and crosses functioning from the same team which is of utmost importance to speedily develop the features and simultaneously deliver the software development process.
 Apart from that DevOps also advocates a shared working space because of which the automated testing, code integration, and development can be done in real-time leading to a more structured and productive agile development life cycle.

### Agile Test Automation Tools
One of the most challenging parts of automation testing is actually choosing an automation tool in itself because if not chosen correctly on the basis of the capacity and capabilities of your automation tool then your time and money might just go down the drain. Hence a good amount of quality time must be spent in the evaluation of the tool.
 During this time, you must analyze and comprehend if this tool connects well with your testing requirements which in turn ensures a favorable outcome in your test automation journey.
To further help you in your search for the perfect automation tool for you, here we have a few features and functionalities that each automation tool must-have regardless of the type of test being performed.
First and foremost, you have to check OS friendly out on your automation tool must-have list. Simply put, it must be compatible with almost all operating systems that could be used by visitors to access your app on the web.
The tool must be able to carry out the end-to-end requirements of the testing team. It must be supported across various browsers so that the cross-browser compatibility can be tested rapidly of the web app on all the targeted browsers.
The interface must be user-friendly, that is, navigation and functionality must be basic and easy so that even beginners can use it for automation testing.
It should be compatible with cross-functional tools like test management tools, continuous delivery, bug tracking tools, and any other quality of work augments. It should have the potential to maintain a chain of regression testing effortlessly.
And finally, it must be in your budget and should provide all the features according to the price.

### Agile Test Automation in Practice
The testing process can become effective and orderly by considering automation as an important part of agile development and adopting an agile test automation approach.
Most testers have stated that these are the two major traps that you should avoid in agile automation testing :
For every delivered feature there must be a place for automation or every test has to be automated for the process to be reasonable.
While implementing a new feature or in case of regression testing where rapid and repeated testing is required, automation must be used.
100% code coverage is a myth, it’s impossible for software codes to be entirely covered with automated or manual testing. Covering the entire code also doesn’t guarantee the quality or relevance of the test. One-to-one translation of tests can be used for better quality and performance as it has proved to be a practical approach in automation testing. Although, even that cannot give you the full coverage of your application as the entire process cannot be automated by one-to-one translation either.
Keeping test cases compact leads to more effective automation testing in agile development since they are not only easily executable but rapid changes can be made according to regression requirements.
Also, the maintenance of large test chains including multiple codes, scenarios, and configurations is reduced with the help of small and compact test cases.

### Cross-browser and cross-platform testing from the beginning

In the earlier stages of the launch, the traffic from niche browsers is limited whereas during the later stages there’s more traffic which makes cross-browser support indispensable.
Cross-browser testing of the application from the very beginning makes the whole product cross-browser and cross platform compatible which is beneficial in the later stages, saving lots of time and resources.
Investing in a testing setup is extremely expensive for a startup because that would mean buying a Mac machine, a Windows machine, android and iOS devices, etc and that indeed required a huge budget. But the cloud can be your hero here. You can take help from selenium as a service cross-browser testing platforms like Testingbot, Browserling, LambaTest, etc to expedite your testing. There’s a vast list of browsers that will let your run your tests on it and a scalable cloud too that would not be yours to maintain, scale or develop.
Read more : [Cross browser Testing Tools](https://testgrid.io/blog/cross-browser-testing-tools/)

### Maintain an all-round visibility of testing process

The testing process shouldn’t just be limited to the QAs and the testers only as the number of people involved in the development is high and it includes stakeholders, project managers, etc.
Ensuring that the automation process is approachable and uncomplicated leads to the results of the automation test to be evident to all the members of the projects. An enormous distinction in implementing automation can be made by taking reviews and collecting trends, statistics, and overall code of quality in the testing process.
Keeping test automation data visible to resources aids in creating a positive perspective on their own, making it easier to periodically update test scripts and also increasing the potential of a collaborative effort through mutual cooperation.

### Constantly keeping track of the development environment

The software development process consists of a network from the back-end system planning to the front-end interaction such as cloud simulations, virtual machines, external databases, etc which is why it is always better to monitor the development environment continuously.
 Bad networks between devices, development environment, or configurations can also bring in bugs, it’s doesn’t necessarily have to be from the application.
Hence, it’s important to comprehend the viability of the environments linked with your product development. It benefits your testing team to focus on the product’s quality and not struggle through tons of data to find the cause of the bug. Organizing and having everything in its own place and keeping your eyes open for the processes guarantees effectiveness and efficiency in agile development.
These were a few tips that you can use to make your testing coherent, well-planned, and effortless. And if you’re using agile test automation frameworks for the first time, then you can always take assistance from the cloud-based testing suite – TestGrid!

## Conclusion
Improved and advanced software development requires the agile development approach and the sole requirement for agile development is not only having knowledge but also requires resources to deal with the newest trends and innovations, automation testing is amongst the most important needs of agile development.
This blog is originally published at [TestGrid](https://testgrid.io/blog/agile-test-automation/)