Improve probability of finding defects from Automation Scripts

In today’s world, automation testing is the key part of software projects. Engineers pick the manual scripts and start converting them in automation scripts. Interestingly, Manual scripts which were executed already {multiple times} or execution is in progress right now by manual team.

So, the question is – what’s the probability of finding the defects by automation? In ideal situation, it’s less chance but there are some key points by adopting them we can work towards improving probability –

Business Objectives Understanding – Engineers must understand the objective behind the business. Why client invested in the app, what are the expectations, who are the audience of it? Putting yourself in their shoes will give complete idea of end user perspective.

Domain Understanding – This is where mostly people lack of knowledge especially when things come to automation. By understanding of domain, engineers do divergent thinking and come up with new/untouched scenarios, different flows, ideas which could help to find more defects. 

Keep adding more verification steps than written in manual scripts – There could be cases where some scenarios/steps missed during manual scripts preparation. Automation engineer should focus on them too and include in scripts.

Automation of scenarios covering multiple modules - There is always defect fixes in all of modules of an app and no one knows when regression defects arise due to change in another module accidently. Automating of scenarios which are covering multiple modules will give maximum bugs occurring in application.

Continuous Integration & Execution – Create scripts early, execute frequently leads to detect defects early and fixes early.

Improve the quality of scripts by using standard practices – For Ex: we should replace hard waits to dynamic waits to get exact time of page/objects loading. It’ll give idea the response time of app.

As Automation testing is most useful to reduce the risk of having defect in application hence, We should automate to find the defects not just for sake of automating it. For good results, different & divergent thinking required.