Top Challenges of Automation Testing

With the requirement of high-quality solutions in the world of IT, test automation is taken for granted as a good solution. Despite its benefits, it is a big concern about how to estimate the ability to implement automated tests in advance to avoid possible failure. Indeed, you should review carefully before using this method. Through this article, you will grasp the top automation testing challenges

Challenge 1: Selecting an appropriate test approach

An appropriate automation test approach plays a key role in the effective result of a project. At the management level, you certainly know what and how to make the test approach; however, to make this approach in test automation is another issue. The first difficulty is making the long run automation process associating with the lifespan of a product. For example, the average cycle of a desktop application is common 12-18 months to over 15 years. Therefore, the test approach needs to be able to execute in the whole process of the software’s life span. Secondly, the test approach has to make sure that when products change or update, it is capable of identifying and keeping up with these changes without human intervention. Taking the example of mobile application, the approach can’t be “one size fits all” because the user requirement rapidly changes.

Definitely, it is hard to address these difficulties on the test approach, facing the challenge of building an effective long run-oriented framework at the beginning.

Challenge 2: Choosing the right tool

One of the automation testing challenges is to select the right tool. Developers and testers can use open-source or commercial tools and use them like a regular basis for building in-house tools. Each tool is suitable for each particular scenario. Given that choosing the right one poses a challenge because of a variety of comprehensive test tools in the market. Particularly, a right tool has to match with many factors such as the long-term orientation of the project, framework, output of the project, the requirement of clients, and the skill of the tester team. If you pick the wrong or inappropriate tool, the whole process can be failed from the start. Indeed, open-source tools often require a higher level of coding skill than commercial tools. Taking an example, Selenium is an open-source tool that requests more programming skills from testers.

Our expert tester recommend that you should set up the process of tool with the following steps:

#1: Defining a set of tool requirements criteria

#2: Reviewing the chosen tools

#3: Conducting a trial test with the tools

#4: Making the final decision whether you use these tools or not?

Challenge 3: Effective communication and collaboration

In comparison with manual testing and development, automated tests actually require more collaboration. From the beginning, the must-have is a good interaction between the delivery team and customer to analyze and understand completely the input and output of the project. When it comes to the test strategy, the tester team needs to communicate with project managers about making a plan, scope, and framework. The fact that automation testers not only talk with developers for understanding code but also manual testers about test cases, and infrastructure engineers about integration to build up the final product. Needless to say, if the misunderstanding from the start is disregarded or neglected, the process can be messy.

Establishing a collaborative environment, such as a specific point of contact in each process, clear expectation and the responsibility of members will help everyone to deliver the information fast and conveniently. Plus, active involvement and a transparent framework will develop your unique company culture.

Challenge 4: High investment cost at the beginning

Nobody can deny the benefit of automation testing, but when mentioning costs, there are many problems and concerns. Despite the high ROI in the long run of test automation, its cost for the initial phase is expensive. It’s necessary for spending money to build automated test frameworks, libraries, and facilities like hardware and software as well. At the beginning, tools needs investment even though you choose the open-source tool. Although open-source tools can decrease the cost of a license, you still need many efforts to train and maintain those tools. Besides, many hidden costs should also be taken into consideration such as meetings, communication, collaboration,….etc. As a consequence, having a consensus between managers or stakeholders about investment poses a challenge. That’s the reason why even with a potential plan and executable goal, many tendencies for automation testing might be rejected due to budget constraints.

Summing up

To sum up, automation testing supports payoffs effectively and is a great method for companies to speed up the progress; however, test automation can not replace human intelligence. We still need humans to make the orientation in the whole process of automation testing. If you are still in doubt and need a guideline or a roadmap, I can provide you a free consultation about automation testing.

David from Lotus Quality Assurance Vietnam