Today test automation is a vital part in the software testing practice. Test automation is used to expedite testing and the delivery of software. Many organizations and clients wants the engagement of test automation which will also cut their testing budget. But through test automation gives all the positive outcomes it should be managed carefully. When introducing test automation we need to consider many things.
- Availability of regression and smoke test cases for automation - We should make sure that we have a repository of manual regression test cases for automation. If not we should gather the current QA team and start building up test cases for automation. Also we should ensure that the test cases are up to date and they do not have any obsolete functionality.
- Making sure that there is sufficient amount of testcases for automation - Though we have a good regression suite we should asses the viability of test automation in each of the test cases. Some test cases will not be able to automate and those test cases should not be marked for test automation.
- Looking at a good tool - There are many tools in the industry on automating different platforms of testing. We need to carefully look at the best suitable tool for automation in terms of cost, support availability, life span of the tool, extendibility of the tool with other libraries should be look into when choosing a tool. The tool chosen should be very much supporting for the user interface and the technology used in application which is to be automated.
- Training a team - This also vital and integral part when introducing test automation practice to an organization or a project. Team should be trained to handle the automation of the application and they should be also trained and posses a knowledge on the applications functionality, rather than automating it blindly.
- Creation of scripting standards - There should be some coding standards and automation scripting standards established before engaging on test automation. This gives a good guidance to the test automation team to carryout their assigned task and review when they go wrong.
- Creation of a test automation framework - Any test automation practice should have a test automation framework. The framework represents the backbone for any test automation work and it is the platform which has all standards and protocols to automate.
- Having of continuous integration support - Automation practice is complete if we have a CI/CD at the end. All the automation scripts should be integrated to CI/CD, which will execute autonomously without any manual intervention, and will start execution when ever there is a code push to the source control.
These are some very important considerations that we need to take into account when implementing the test automation practice in an organization.
