Challenges in Test Automation and their solutions

Hi Guys, Have you just started your career in Test Automation? Or if you have few years’ experience in automation like me, then you would resonate with me on the below challenges in test automation.

I attended one session conducted by @The Test Chat community, 1 day before and here is what I have learnt. I have added my observations also along with the panellist’s opinion:

1. Before starting working on automation, do we really think that we need it? Is it really required for our project?

Solution: Explore the project. Understand the requirements and see if you need automation for your project. Discuss with people. Have a open mind. You will find the answer.

Example: Suppose the sprint is of 2 weeks. At every 2 weeks, QA is responsible for running regression test suite. If it is being executed by functional test engineers, it might be taking 5-6 days or may be more which is not providing any value to the project or the organisation. This will be time consuming process. You cannot continue working on regression in this manner. You MUST have automation test suite in place which can be executed in lesser time and with few resources.

2.      To choose the skilled resources is a challenge.

Solution: We should have some experts in a team from whom other team members can learn and sharpen their skills.

3.      Experts who knows the design patterns.

4.      Experts who knows how to design a framework for a given project.

5.      Experts who can provide support in leveraging the framework.

6.      Lack of communication & collaboration among team members.

7.      ROI is a biggest factor which comes into picture while presenting the cost & benefit analysis to management. Without management support, the whole test automation efforts will be at risk. So, taking care of Return on Investment is critical.

8.      To choose the right tool for automation. There are many open source and commercial tools available in the market. But, how to select a right tool is always a challenge.

Solution: Proper research should take place in order to select the right tool.

9.      A proper testing approach for automation should be in place.

Solution: Technically, it’s vital for testers to find an appropriate test automation approach. In order to do so, they have to answer several important questions: How to reduce effort in both implementation and maintenance of test script and test suite? Will automation test suites be having a long lifetime? How to generate useful test reports and metrics?

10.  Knowing what to automate and what not.

Solution: Understanding of the product and its requirements. Risk Analysis will help you to understand what can be and not be automated.

Thank you for reading! Please feel free to contribute on the same.

To listen to detailed discussion, please visit The Test Chat channel on Youtube.