To Get the Results You Expect From QA Automation, Follow These Expert Insights
Automated software testing services already have the upper hand over manual testing. You have probably seen many discuss the benefits of automated tests: enhanced efficiency, coverage, accuracy, and cost-effectiveness. But how about taking things further? You can double the values of test automation with the right strategy.
Based on the cases our QA company assisted over the years, we’ve compiled expert advice to get your automated testing to a new level.
Automation for Preventing Regression
After updates or fixes, you always want to see smoothly operating software. Discovering broken functionalities after means long and tedious testing of “fractured” scenarios, and that’s why automating regression is the most common request for QA services. Yet to fully benefit from it, there are few automated testing how-tos teams should focus on.
Plan the Testing Process
Before testing, it’s always best to comprehensively organize the process. In other words, if you want smooth operations with no questions or concerns, your experts need to decide on:
- Testing environment.
- Technologies and tools.
- CI/CD configurations.
- Communication channels and procedures.
Avoid figuring these out on the way. With no stable starting point, testing will become a waterfall of the whats and the hows.
Prioritize Test Cases
You want to have a good grasp of what you consider the essentials of your software. Logically, you’ll want to secure crucial features first. Then move on to intricate and bug-prone elements. Of course, prioritizing tests may go differently per your product and needs. But generally, before anything else, automated testing is for:
- Critical functionalities.
- Complex cases.
- High-risk areas.
Don’t test “randomly” or leave challenging scenarios for later. Complex cases are generally more influential. So if any troubles occur when testing them, automation QA (AQA) will have to spend even more time on revisions.
Perform Regression Systemically
With automated regression, you’ll have the ability to quickly run tests after every new software version and feature. It’s a great advantage, and you should use it. As frequent tests let you:
- Detect regression issues early.
- Verify interactions/dependencies between various components.
- Maintain quality and reliability.
Missing out on this opportunity will result in quality and performance degradation. And if something goes wrong during the testing, your teams will only get more work.
Automation for Actively Growing Products
In an actively growing product, issues can appear fast. Teams need to swiftly create, check, and deploy new elements. And we all know it can get chaotic. That’s why we’re happy to see start-ups proactively automating sanity testing. Such an approach lets teams see the picture in real-time, get familiar with the bug rate, and act accordingly.
Test Every Addition & Fix
Sanity testing focuses on smaller software sections. Such a directed effort allows for in-depth coverage and fewer issues during regression. Hence, when you test each update and change, you attain stable and functional components. And your team doesn’t have to spend time and resources on going back (amending code and testing) after every minor mistake.
Combine Manual & Automated Effort
Software under development might not have all features figured out. And with stable functionality, there’s no automation in testing. At the same time, you need most of the things done fast and accurately. Here, implementing both manual and automated tests is beneficial. Namely, manual QA lets engineers go “off script” when needed and introduce automation promptly.
Automation for Consistent UX
The number of environments your product is compatible with impacts the user pool. Ideally, the software should work on any OS, browser, device, etc. Testing thousands of options manually is too long and prone to human error. Thus, automated compatibility tests offer a faster, more precise, and easily scalable solution.
Monitor Platform Updates
New releases often introduce changes that can affect compatibility tests. To prevent setbacks and errors, your team should keep up with upcoming updates and changes, e.g., by monitoring official documentation. By getting ahead of platform updates, you can allocate resources efficiently and modify testing environments in time.
Establish a Support Matrix
Create a comprehensive compatibility matrix that covers a wide range of platforms, OSs, browsers, devices, and configurations relevant to your target audience. Develop the matrix per market research, customer data, and industry trends. This way, you’ll ensure that automated tests cover crucial combinations and that QA engineers always know what they’re doing and why.
Automation for Robust Integrations
The more communication routes your software has with other systems, the harder integration testing gets. Notably, these tests take considerable effort and time to prepare and maintain. As your and external platforms keep moving forward, automating integration turns into a long-term success strategy. When it comes to optimizing it, a few things come into play.
Secure Static Scenarios
There needs to be a static scenario or defined ways of how a scenario can behave. Simply put, AQA specialists can’t automate dynamic or unpredictable cases. Hence, there should always be a set of agreed “rules” according to which AQA can create a script.
Provide Access to Needed Resources
Before starting, QA engineers need access to all third-party systems they can use. Say you need to check Gmail integrations. This service can detect whether a human or a machine tries to log in. So simple web access will not work in the scope of automation scripts. In such cases, QA experts can use external API calls to get appropriate information.
Use External APIs
Using external APIs should become standard practice. With them, QA professionals don’t waste time raising browsers and communicating with web elements. For that reason, APIs are a much faster and more stable option for obtaining, updating, and deleting needed data.
Automation for Secured Business Logic
When your application involves intricate business rules and complex workflows, manual QA is time-consuming and error-prone. Hence, you should introduce automation to create test scripts that cover all possible scenarios, ensuring the accurate execution of the app’s business logic. To maximize the outcome, prioritize these three aspects:
- Stable and working test case. Usually, business cases are huge. And a single automation scenario can go on for several hours. Hence, during this time, scripts must run continuously with no failures. Essentially, AQA specialists can create step-by-step automation instructions (for full coverage) only with a non-shifting scenario.
- Controlled environment. No QA engineer wants to see a test fail on step #498 (among 1500 steps) due to system downtime. That is why setting up a safe and fixed testing environment is paramount.
- Robust performance. First, automated tests for business logic are highly complex. Second, many tests have to be active simultaneously (parallel testing). Otherwise, this process will take weeks. These make the system heavily loaded. Consequently, your team needs to secure the system’s steady performance to achieve smooth testing.
For example, our experts faced a case where tests were going for 14 hours daily. To create and maintain the scripts, they had a dedicated AQA team of 3 engineers. So you can only imagine the potential ramifications of something going wrong in this instance.
Automation for Refined CI/CD
2023 has seen many companies adopt CI/CD practices for software development. But on multiple occasions, organizations face troubles when it comes to ensuring that each code change integrates smoothly and doesn’t introduce regressions. And what they need is a robust test suite that can be executed automatically in the CI/CD pipeline, providing timely feedback on the quality of each build.
Automation lies at the heart of continuous integration and delivery. So the fundamental aspect of maximizing automation is making CI/CD as stable as possible at the beginning of SDLC. Here’s how you can achieve this.
- Implement a solid suite of automated tests that cover different levels (unit, integration, system, etc.) and aspects (functional, performance, security, etc.) of the application.
- Establish clear and well-defined pipelines with well-structured stages using version control and proper branching strategies.
- Regularly review and improve the pipeline, incorporating feedback from developers, engineers, and operations teams.
- Ensure that the developers follow best practices for code hygiene, such as using version control, writing unit tests, and adhering to coding standards.
- Set up automated build systems that compile the code, run unit tests, and perform code quality checks.
- Establish clear guidelines for developers to commit code frequently, minimizing the risk of conflicts and reducing integration issues.
To Sum Up
Automated testing is not valuable per se. And as any other step in an SDLC, it requires a strategic approach – with care, time, and, most importantly, an expert touch. So instead of putting all hope in automation, trust your specialists. AQA professionals will turn automated tests into the asset that drives your business.