Manual Testing in Codeless Testing Times
Enrique A Decoss
Senior Manager | Quality Strategist | Test Manager | Head of Quality
In Agile/DevOps, as new products emerge, new companies appear, and new features are delivered faster.
Testing is essential, but as it has to perform several steps consuming much time and reducing time for Exploratory Testing or Monkey Testing.
If you want to know more about codeless Testing, please refer to this article, in that article we discussed a heuristic approach called "training everyone to code" and many will have no desire to be trained others will adapt. Companies are not seeing a significant improvement in Automation Testing.
“Software testing proves the existence of bugs not their absence.”
Instead of forcing Manual Testers to change into Automated Testers, as many already mentioned, Manual Testing proves the existence of bugs, so how can we help them? We need to help them deliver faster (Delivered with the best Quality) and not trying to convince them to change roles.
Codeless Testing could help them, but we need to consider some factors, same as other approaches, organizations need to take a leap of faith.
First of all, Software Tester needs to get familiar with the codeless tool, understanding tool features, and how to record and play specific scenarios. Codeless testing tools mostly use UI and visual elements while building test cases, as this technique relies on the native identification of the web elements, testers would not have to write or even read codes.
Once Software Testers have mastered the codeless tool, Team must prioritize and select those repetitive tests/scenarios. Manual Testing is having a lot of repetitive tests such as login as X role and see X action available or validate X dropdown with X, Y, and Z values. The main activity here would be collecting those flows and run them automatically.
As Manual Tester, we need to design our flows correctly, follow recording instruction and try to capture step by step, keep an eye on validations, most prominent pitfall recording test cases is forgetting a validation (Assertion, in plain English, expected would be equal of actual value). Don't forget to include some test scenarios to uncover more bugs.
After we created some tests using our codeless tool, and they are running flawless, now we can add a new title to our current role as Codeless Tester, but, as members of a team, we cannot work in isolation, software testing involves a process of Testing early, testing often and Test everywhere. Stay connected, include other units, try to share with other teams in your organization, and get feedback!
Perhaps you are familiar with some codeless tools, maybe your Team is using them, but if not, you can take a look at following codeless tools comparison table.
Areas of Improvement with Codeless Tools
We already discussed the necessity of releasing faster and reduce potential failures on our final Products/Features and Codeless Testing is a great approach to do it. Still, we need to mention those areas of improvement.
Reusability and Maintainability, this area is critical; if we keep adding tests, we could end with a lot of the same, and maintaining those would be an impossible task. Codeless Tools are adding some Reusable artifacts and Smart Selectors (Autohealing feature), but, we need to design our flows correctly, and Codeless can provide extra help.
Debugging could be hard if we talk about some design errors or any mistake in our flows, Codeless tools must provide some debugging mechanisms; flow diagrams are excellent, and Model-Based test helps a lot. Still, perhaps they can include some user-friendly inspection features to quickly identify and resolve any possible failure in our codeless tests.
Training, this area could be resolved with some detailed documentation; in reality, many people prefer to have some video tutorials, tips, and hints. Onboarding training could be beneficial, and this is important to see if the Codeless tool is a success in our organization (Key Factor: Getting familiar with Test Tool).
Conclusion
Some software testers are not programmers, and automation engineers capable of the job are limited. Codeless testing tools require minimal programming skills, as a starting point, and those can help Manual Testers to achieve Quality in less time.
Human intervention is still necessary; some areas need the human touch, but we need to remove those repetitive checks and to focus on uncover bugs; at the end of the day, we need to make the testing process cost-effective.
Finally, if we want Codeless Testing a reality in our organization, we need to consider that Codeless Testing requires a new mindset and exceptional leadership.
“The principle objective of software testing is to give confidence in the software.”
Please leave a comment and Happy Bug hunting!
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_testing
https://blog.testproject.io/2017/10/24/9-steps-going-manual-automated-testing/
https://docs.testproject.io/testproject-agents/what-is-a-testproject-agent
https://techbeacon.com/app-dev-testing/10-features-every-codeless-test-automation-tool-should-offer