How to Start Automation Testing From Scratch?

How to Start Automation Testing From Scratch?

Every business that is developing a software product follows a software development life cycle. Testing is an important aspect of product development, particularly when it comes to ensuring quality. Even though testing is critical for providing a quality product, many smaller businesses overlook it. It’s critical to have tests in place, but how we run these tests is equally crucial.

Although manual testing is not the best option, some companies prefer it. When you’ve got your tests in place, the next obvious step is to automate the process. Test automation improves the overall efficiency of software development and enables the development of more powerful tools.

What is Automated testing?

Automated testing, which includes functional and load/stress testing, is used to internally generate software and services to assist in the testing process. Tests that are automated produce consistent outcomes and data points. The advantage is the ease of maintenance, the possibility to utilize resources more productively during off-peak hours, and the capacity to generate reports according to completed tests. Features for test planning, management of test cases, and defect management are all included in the associated quality management software.

Why should you automate your tests?

Despite the fact that all software teams test their products, the final solutions frequently have bugs. Most test engineers’ best attempts are to detect these flaws in the testing environment, they usually end up in the final product. Even the best manual testing techniques have their limitations, which is one of the reasons this occurs. Manual testing techniques are created with much effort by the testers. They sit in front of a computer and meticulously go over numerous application panels, experimenting with a variety of input and usage options. These testers must compare results and draw attention to any discrepancies between expected behavior and their observations. Because of code modifications, varied hardware configurations, and different operating environments, they repeat these steps several times over development cycles. All of these difficulties make manual testing less effective and inefficient overall. Test automation can help software teams increase efficiency and coverage of their testing operations in this situation.

How to start with test automation?

Before starting test automation, you have to take a few steps. Let’s see what they are.

Convincing the management

No matter how enthusiastic you are to adopt test automation in your firm, you will be unable to do so until your management is convinced of the advantages that test automation provides. It is an unavoidable fact that test automation is costly, and should be able to convince the administration to bear the initial costs, resources, automated test architect but also must ensure them while scripts are being built to start testing

The quality of their products is prioritized by wise management. However, businesses are affecting their bottom line if they do not invest in automated testing. The number of scripts that can be completed automatically versus manually should be emphasized. Comprehensive testing has the potential to increase customer value and improve end-user service. You can detect and fix errors more quickly with automated testing, which means lower long-term expenditures.

Choosing the best option among automation tools

One of the most important components of test automation is selecting an automated testing tool. It’s also self-evident that it’s not as simple as it appears. As there are so many options on the market, it’s necessary to pick the automated testing tool that best meets your needs. The following are the most significant factors to consider when selecting the appropriate tools:

The tool should be compatible with the technology you’re using in your project. If your app runs on a mobile device, the tool must be able to run scripts on that device as well. You can either buy a single tool that supports all of the technologies in your app or buy separate tools for each one.

Need the essential qualified resources who can utilize or learn automation tools in a shorter amount of time. Providing a solid reporting system to show results to the clients.

The automation tool should have a small learning curve. There are a lot of no-code/low-code tools in the market that is pretty easy to get started with. A good low-code tool provides almost the same flexibility that coding tools provide. Outomated is one such tool where you can find all the important features of a good automation tool in one place.

Analyzing suitable test applications for automation

It is not required to automate each of your organization’s apps. When choosing an application to automate, we must consider several things. These elements must be present in the automated application:

• The application should not be in its first phases of development. (The app must have all or some stable modules that have been manually tested.)
• The application’s user interface has to be stable.
• This application’s manual test cases should be written down.

The primary purpose of automation is to ensure that if a program is bug-free in one build, it will continue to be bug-free in subsequent builds. Manual testers should not waste time looking for regression errors; these should be detected by automation.

So, in order to discover a regression, we’ll need an application that is already stable and has several test cases. The automation team will turn these test cases into scripts, which will be executed on every build to ensure there are no regressions.

Creating a framework for test automation

The automation architect’s most important duty is to create an automation framework that will allow for long-term automated testing. The automation framework is a set of principles and meticulous preparation that allows you to develop scripts with the least amount of maintenance. If anything in the program changes, the scripts only need to be updated frequently. An automation framework’s appeal lies in its ability to do just that.

Planning and writing scripts

Choosing which environments the scripts will run in is part of the execution plan. OS, Browser, and various hardware combinations For instance, if the test case specifies that the website is checked browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer, the automation team will design the script in such a way that it can run in all these browsers. This should always be communicated prior to the creation of scripts, as it will be addressed in scripts if the automation team is aware of it.

The execution plan should also include who will carry out the scripts. Typically, the automation team executes the scripts on every build, but this varies by firm. Some managers request that engineers run these scripts on their builds prior to release, while others pay a dedicated resource solely for the execution. Some businesses even execute scripts in unattended mode, which requires no additional resources. The process of test automation is similar to that of software development. When writing the scripts, all best programming principles should be followed.

Reporting of test scripts

The tool will likely have a reporting option. We can, however, design customized reporting techniques, such as auto-emailing data to management. If management requires it, we can prepare reports in the form of charts and tables at the conclusion of each execution. Management should constantly be aware of test case coverage, that is, which manual test cases have been automated and which have not.

Maintenance of the test scripts

Maintenance will not be a problem if the best programming techniques are followed and a good framework is used. When an application receives a modification request, maintenance is usually required. To ensure flawless execution, the scripts should be modified as soon as possible to accommodate the modification. Maintenance will become a nightmare if the structure isn’t good and best practices aren’t followed. The majority of automation projects fail due to script maintenance issues.

Conclusion

Building a good automated testing plan is difficult and each team’s approach will be different. No two teams are exactly the same. Some may have more human testers than automation engineers, while others rely on developers to handle. Budget, timelines, application kind, and development model are all elements that influence how an automated testing strategy is performed.

It is not necessary to make a tough transition from manual to automated testing. Manual testers may know exactly where to make corrections while learning by being able to view every action they perform. Manual testing, after using automated testing tools and procedures, has proven to be an efficient approach to double-check the program to ensure no stone is left unturned. In this way, manual and automated testing complement each other and when done correctly, may ensure that the final product is as good as it can be.