Software teams in companies usually test their products, but even with that, the final results can still be prone to errors. The defects find their way into the final product despite the test engineer’s best effort to detect them. This happens because manual testing may not always be the most effective way.
Testers do their best in devising manual testing procedures. They carefully go through different application screens and experiment. They then compare results, focusing on differences between expected behavior and recoded observations. The processes are then repeated multiple times during the development cycle.
The repetition is due to different hardware configurations, code changes, and operating environments. All these have an impact on the success of manual testing on a broader level. It makes manual testing inefficient. This is where automation testing comes in. It enables teams to maximize testing procedures and improve efficiency, efficacy, and coverage.
So what is automation testing? It’s the process of confirming whether the software is functioning as it should. Software teams check if it meets all requirements before it’s released into production. Automation testing is carried out in different ways including:
- Functional testing
- Smoke testing
- Compatibility testing
- Regression testing
If you’re new to automation testing, you possibly have many questions about how to learn automation such as:
- What automation testing concepts are
- How one can begin the automation testing process from scratch
- How to know which test to automate
- And what best practices must be followed for successful automation testing.
Once you decide to begin carrying out test automation, the next stage is to introduce the idea to your team. You must consider your team’s needs and how to include automation in a manner that will balance those needs.
Contrary to popular belief, automation testing can easily be mastered. Making use of the automation testing tutorials available online can make a real difference. This will walk your team through the basics and also the nitty-gritty of automation testing.
Automation testing helps you to achieve greater test coverage within a short time. These and many other advantages are the whole point of automation testing.
Importance of Automation Testing
Modern software is flexible and complex. The manual testing of new software requires a lot of resources.
Automation testing helps to improve the quality of the software. It also runs tests much faster and increases accuracy. However, you must figure out all the pros and cons before deciding to change your current workflow.
In this article, we let you in on the importance of automation testing to your product. Let’s do this.
1. Reduced Costs
When you first begin automation testing, the initial costs are not very high. However, once your business is up and running, you’ll want to invest in better tools. You’ll also want to hire resources and invest in better servers. All that does not come cheap.
Automated tests don’t write themselves either. Creating automated tests takes time and effort, which does not happen overnight.
Avoid focusing on the financial aspect when justifying the introduction of automation testing. What you should be considering are the costs of failure. What will manual testing cost you if problems aren’t detected and escape into production? Can you stand losing your clients? Think about the time and money you’ll have to spend rectifying the situation.
Strong sets of test suites repeatedly executed when change is made to the code is essential. They reduce the chances of problems leaking into the field.
Through automation testing, bugs are detected early enough during the software development life cycle. The issue gets tackled thereby reducing the risk of delivering a faulty product. The delivery of a quality product into the market is every businesses’ mantra. It beats any kind of savings or cutbacks.
2. Faster Feedback
Automation testing through frameworks like Cypress and Selenium increases test case execution. Selenium, for instance, increases test case execution in the following types of tests:
- Compatibility testing
- Performance testing
- Integration testing
- System testing
- Regression testing
- End-to-end testing
Machines’ ability to work faster is particularly beneficial for repetitive tasks like regression testing, especially when using regression testing software. In this process, software developers re-run previous tests to make sure that new changes haven’t affected the existing functionality of the software. This helps ensure that updates or new features don’t cause any unintended issues.
Automation tools can quickly identify any regression issues, helping teams detect problems early and make improvements swiftly. This speed allows for more frequent feedback cycles, which is essential in Agile environments.
Software developers are supposed to push code, receive feedback, and refine the code. This is a repetitive process that must happen in every sprint.
Automation testing enables tests to run fast enough to produce accurate results within a short timeline. This allows teams to get fast, comprehensive, and flawless feedback.
3. Earlier Detection
Automation testing allows developers to run tests before pushing code to version control. Other automated tests like regression and integration are also run automatically. As fast as it’s created, each patch of code gets tested exhaustively. This causes earlier detection of bugs when their impact is still very minimal.
This early detection leads to early debugging. If bugs escape into the production stage, they become more difficult to eliminate. As a result, larger parts of the software under test get affected.
Earlier detection of bugs improves the quality of the software. It also reduces the time spent resolving issues later on in the pipeline.
4. Higher Test Coverage
Manual testing limits the number of tests that can get verified. Automation testing enables teams to write new tests and add them to the automated test suite. This increases a product’s test coverage. Hence, enabling the proper testing of more features.
Automated testing also enables developers to write in-depth tests to test complex cases. Developers are also able to run lengthy tests, a process that happens unattended. Such tests are usually avoided during manual testing.
5. Accuracy and Reliability
As mentioned earlier, manual testing is prone to errors. This is because it’s done by humans and mistakes are expected. Due to this, inaccurate results are passed onto the development team. Automated tests perform the same tasks with precision every time. The results are then made available to all that are concerned within a short time.
Execution of the same tests on different servers is also an aspect of reliability. This enables quick verification of whether the tests are running as expected. It helps to rule out the possibility of server configuration issues.
6. Reusability of Test Suite
Building an automated test suite for the first time before defining your suite can be a challenge. But once you’re done, it becomes easy to reuse tests for other use cases and other projects.
You can also hook up other projects to the automated test suite. This is after getting an understanding of setting up an automated test suite.
The knowledge gained after setting up an automated test suite can be replicated to set up test automation for a new project.
Conclusion
Not all projects need full automation testing. A few auxiliary scripts are enough to speed up the work. If you begin working on a project meant to last several years, automation testing is indispensable.
It enables teams to deal with testing more efficiently and much faster. If it takes one week before your product is ready, automation testing can reduce that period to just a few hours.
In today’s world, You can’t afford to ignore technological advancements. Automation testing will help you boost your business operations. This puts you ahead of the competition and who wouldn’t want that!
