Exploring the Journey to Smart Test Automation
Tags: testing, qa, qualityassurance, automation
Published: 2022-02-15 16:18:24

Over the last two decades, the software testing paradigm has changed dramatically. The testing journey has become more sophisticated as it has progressed from manual to automated testing. In today's fast-paced IT environment, however, the field of software testing must develop new and well-researched testing approaches. For this reason, AI-based testing has become popular and has proven to be quite effective.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the most recent technology making inroads across all industries including software testing services. AI is redefining smart test automation processes to make testing easier and more efficient while producing higher-quality results.

## How Mid-Sized Companies Benefit from Automation

Automating key tasks could initially be costly for small and medium-sized businesses. The return on investment, however, is usually quickly realized through:

* Higher productivity.
* Time saving.
* Shorter lead times to production release.
* Increased efficiency by reducing errors, streamlining the development, and testing process.
* Better test coverage to deliver stable and feature-rich products with little or no increase in production time and costs.

All these benefits can help your company function more resourcefully and enable you to compete with larger firms.

## The Right Time to Consider Automation

Knowing whether to automate testing is a very strategic procedure that requires the guidance of a skilled testing team. Automation is highly valuable when planned and implemented correctly. However, it is not a practical approach to every testing scenario. 

Getting started with automation works best when focusing on functionality that requires little change. This contains the features of a software product that has gone through the development lifecycle, been thoroughly tested, and had the results authorized by the subject matter experts. When coding changes are required to these features, automation must be reapplied.

It is crucial for software test engineers to know when and what to automate and how it should work. The following questions can help testing teams determine when it’s time to transition from manual software testing for specific functionality and features:

* Is the development code stable?
* Are the specs for the functions/features fully signed off?
* Does the team have a thorough understanding of the test automation technology?
* Has there been a proper assessment of suitability for the test automation tools?
* What plan is in place to know when development will be finished, and when automation can start? Note that rigid timelines can lead to unnecessary pressure that results in shoddy automated testing.
* Who will be responsible for writing the automation scripts?
* Will the team’s productivity and manual testing efforts be negatively impacted by adding test automation?
* What is the maintenance strategy for automation areas?

## How Smart QA Automation Can Help Your Project

There are numerous advantages to automated testing versus manual testing in specific scenarios:

* Sites that are multilingual.
* Repetitive test cases like the login procedure and regression testing.
* Form filling is a time-consuming task in some situations.
* Test cases that are broad with an extended scope.

When tests are tedious, repetitive, or complex, the potential for errors increases, which is why automation testing is the best approach in these situations. In contrast, manual testing is preferable when:

* New test cases that are yet to be manually executed.
* Test scenarios where requirements are constantly changing.
* Test cases that aren't standard.

It's easy to see why having a human eye on the testing would be advantageous in other situations. For example, code should be tested manually the first time it is developed to check that it produces the desired outcome. This can then be utilized as an automatic solution once it has been verified.

## The Test Automation Process

Automated testing uses specific software tools to execute a test case suite instead of a person carefully executing the test steps. A test automation tool may compare predicted and actual outcomes and generate comprehensive test reports in addition to entering test data into the program. Repeated test execution of the same test cases will be required in future development cycles. An automated test suite can be recorded and replayed as needed without the need for human interaction.

The objective of test automation is to reduce the manual test cases rather than to replace manual testing entirely. Test automation can be used for nearly all types of testing, including, integration testing, functional and regression testing, and data-driven testing. 

These steps are typically followed when getting started with test automation:

###1. Choosing the Automation Technology

Selecting the right tools depends on the technology that the application is developed on. Conducting a proof-of-concept beforehand is a recommended approach that can save a lot of cost and pain later.

###2. Defining the Automation Scope

The scope of automation should focus on the following areas:

* Business-critical features.
* Functionalities that are shared across applications.
* Scenarios with a significant amount of data.
* Possibility from a technical standpoint.
* The percentage of reusable components.
* The difficulty of the test cases.
* Cross-browser testing using the same test cases where possible.

### 3. Design and Development

The next step is to design and develop the test automation cases that include:

* Preparation of an automation testbed.
* Scripting and execution schedules and timelines.
* Automation testing deliverables.

### 4. Testing Execution

Automation scripts are executed during this phase. Before they may be set to run, the scripts require input test data. Once executed they provide detailed test reports. Scripts can be executed on one or multiple machines and script execution can be done overnight to save time.

### 5. Maintenance

The maintenance stage is used to see if the new features added to the software are working properly and new automation scripts are approved and maintained. To reap the full rewards of test automation, it is important to measure metrics. The success of your test automation efforts cannot be determined only by comparing manual versus automated operations, but rather by collecting data on:

* Percentage of bugs discovered.
* For every release cycle, the time required for automation testing is minimized.
* Customer satisfaction index.
* Enhancement of productivity.

## Takeaways

Intelligent test automation services can lower costs, improve testing accuracy, cut time-to-market without losing quality, and improve overall customer happiness. Testing automation that incorporates next-generation technologies helps developers and testers simplify and accelerate the development and testing process by removing repeatable and repetitive processes.

There are numerous ways in which intelligent automated testing can assist enterprises in the development or improvement of software or applications. Test cases may be easily selected and automated, resulting in faster response times, infrastructure optimization, and root cause analysis. Test data management and environment development can also be automated, reducing reliance on manual software testing.