How Robotic Process Automation Helps in Software Testing
Tags: rpa, automation, software, testing
Published: 2022-03-31 05:19:00

 
Robotic Process Automation's contribution to the field of Software Testing is outstanding. Some of its benefits include increasing the software's productivity, allocation of repetitive tasks to RPA bots, and reducing the workloads of a firm's employees. 

Due to these benefits, RPA has gained massive popularity in recent years. Let us walk through these advantages in detail. 

## What is Robotic Process Automation?

[Robotic Process Automation](https://research.aimultiple.com/rpa-stats/), or RPA, is software that monitors the rule-based, repetitive tasks performed by humans. Also, the process uses artificial intelligence to perform these same tasks without any human intervention. 

Rule-based RPA bots handling repetitive tasks eliminate the risk of human error and free up employees' time to focus on tasks that require their mental stimulation.
**Relevant read:** [Benefits of using RPA for businesses](https://dev.to/sofyrus/key-benefits-of-robotic-process-automation-rpa-for-businesses-16na)

## How is RPA Helping in Software Testing?

[RPA has many useful use cases](https://sofyrus.com/article/robotic-process-automation-use-cases) for almost every industry and software testing is one of them.
Software testing is a time-consuming task involving several steps. Even with automation testing, there are still many tasks that take a lot of time for a testing engineer. These tasks include preparing test data as inputs in software testing and setting preconditions. 

According to a study from IBM, test data preparation involves searching, maintaining, managing, and generating test data, taking about [30% to 60%](https://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/tips-to-design-test-data-before-executing-your-test-cases/) of a tester's time to test software. Not only that, but with every new change in the software, a tester has to perform a series of functional and non-functional tests. 

These tests ensure that any modifications done in the source code have not impacted the functioning of the software. Re-running the same set of tests every time a software change is called regression testing, which becomes problematic. 

Performing manual regression testing is challenging for every tester. They have to perform all the same steps involved in the tests, and missing any of them would result in a completely different outcome.

Using Robotic Process Automation for regression testing helps ensure that all the steps involved in the testing are carried out correctly. 

Also, the reports generated by the tests are accurate. With RPA in software testing, performing regression testing as often as required with minimal human intervention is easier.

## RPA Bots Help in Post-Test Conditions of Software

[RPA bots](https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/developers-practitioners/bots-are-here-use-rpa-and-ai-automate-digital-tasks) also assist in judging whether the software is working as expected after the corrections have been made. 

Gathering the load requirement analysis for the software, a software developer has to depend on the client, and the answer varies from person to person and is prone to human error. 

The number of users per hour, expected response time, and other important transactions are some of the requirements for predicting the load on the system. 

Instead of assuming all this data, testers can use RPA bots to monitor the load on the system and use the information to construct profiles for performance testing.

Creating and comparing test reports are other time-consuming processes in software testing that can benefit from Robotic Process Automation. Test reports include reporting all the defects and bugs in the software and whether or not any new change to the software has fixed the problem. 

Test reporting is a process that continues throughout the software development life cycle, and creating detailed reports every time a regression test is performed on the software can take a lot of tester time. 

Using RPA in software testing can help create a detailed report highlighting every bug and defect in the software. Once the report is generated, RPA bots can also handle the sharing of reports to the team members responsible for handling the code development to make the necessary corrections. 

Also, using RPA will assure that the test report generation is on time and the corrections are made to the software at the minimum possible cost.

## Additional Benefits of Using RPA in Software Testing

Robotic process automation is automating repetitive tasks using software to imitate human actions. Using RPA in software testing can be very beneficial to help take the load off the tester by allocating the time-consuming tasks to the RPA bots and freeing up their time for more productive tasks that require mental stimulation.

Any alteration and modification to the source code require a set of tests to ensure that the software is doing what it is supposed to do. Since regression testing involves many steps, there is a high chance of human error, or sometimes, the tester may even skip performing a regression test due to lack of timing. 

Using [Robotic Process Automation services](https://sofyrus.com/robotic-process-automation) ensures that every change in the source code is tested and all the steps involved are carried out correctly. 

RPA bots can also manage the test data preparation, setting pre-test conditions, and checking the test condition to determine whether the software is functioning as it is supposed to.

## Final Words

Using Robotic Process Automation in Software Testing can help save time and resources for organizations. Software testing is a time-consuming and repetitive process that continues throughout software development.

RPA in software testing involves:

- Automating the setting of pre-test conditions.
- Test data preparations.
- Performing repetitive tests after every change to the code.
- Generating and managing the test reports and checking the post-test conditions of software.

Automating all these processes will save a software testing engineer's time to focus on tasks that require mental stimulation.