Test Automation: Helping to deliver high quality.

When we talk about Test Automation, we should consider it as part of Testing itself; we know the existence of functional Testers and Automation Tester (I won't contemplate SDETs, SET, or DevTest).

Test Automation was a game-changer, running many test cases automatically, conducting so many validations, it is a great "ally" for Testing, and that was the main goal, helping Testing to focus on the essential tasks.

But lately, many companies are requesting Testing 100% Automated; we rely on automatic checks over and over and wholly misplaced Testing activities such as Exploratory Testing, Ad-hoc Testing, or Mob Testing. If we want to succeed with our Testing approach, Test Automation must help us to deliver faster with high-quality.

"Humans are still smarter than machines."

Test Automation and the temptation of automating everything

I would like to consider the analogy of clearing a minefield if we have an automated test suite running repeated over and over again, we won't find any new mine unless we introduce some variations.

We must consider some critical points when we do Test Automation.

Weigh the cost of Test Automation over other options

Test Automation can help us to speed up our Testing activities; we must understand different aspects like cost of automating, Time constraint of the project, resources available, such others. Keep in mind other testing options (Exploratory Testing, Mob Testing, Pair Testing), and the most important, don't automate tasks that will not have to be repeated.

"Automating without good test design may result in a lot of activity, but little value."

Plan for Test Automation maintenance

Maintenance cost grows as the set of test scripts increase; in my experience, I have noticed extensive Test Automation suites, including thousands of test scripts (Parallel Testing could help here).

My recommendation is to keep your Test Automation design simple, avoid flakiness on your test scripts and try to implement a smart element selection strategy or take advantage of AI and smart selector functionality (Auto-healing).

Don't run automated tests too soon.

An important aspect of continuous Testing is testing early, but what about when the application under test is not ready, and we are creating tentative test scripts. If you start automating from day one, you'll spend much time shooting at a moving target. Avoid waste of time and focus on your Test Automation strategy.

Over Automation can kill your delivery.

Avoid the temptation of automated everything; as we mentioned above, Automation must focus on repetitive tasks and risk-based scenarios, but we cannot entirely rely on it.

In July 2017, Elon Musk presided over a coming out party for the Model 3, more than a year after nearly a half-million customers had made a $1,000 deposit to reserve Tesla’s eagerly anticipated mass market entry.

At the celebratory event, Musk was to hand over keys to the first 30 Model 3 production vehicles and share his perspective on what to expect from Tesla in the exciting months ahead. But storm clouds were brewing and Musk knew it. The cars delivered that day were painstakingly built by hand since much of Tesla’s overly ambitious assembly line automation was inoperable.

Test Automation can be a powerful ally during our Agile Testing, always keep looking for opportunities to save time or challenging to do for functional testers. In response to the minefield analogy and repeated checks, we must use Exploratory Testing to capture other business scenarios or corner cases.

Keep in mind that all Testing may be exploratory; currently, not all Testing is done exploration first, and not all Testing focuses on learning as much as proper exploratory Testing does.

Codeless Testing

Codeless test automation helps to create automated tests without the need to write codes. It could be tough to assimilate for some Automation Tester.

We should give a try Codeless Testing as it can help to speed up Testing, allows the test process adapted to Agile and DevOps requirements, and enables faster information on the business risk associated with a software release.

We must avoid that comparison of handcrafted Test Automation (Creating our Test Framework from scratch) vs. Codeless Test Automation.

Test Frameworks are built by analyzing the purpose of automation testing for the project. To be more specific, it is the working style of writing, running, reporting, and maintaining the tests. As part of an Agile team or QaOps approach, if we can deliver our products/services faster using Codeless Testing tools, we should try using those.

The same as defining which programming language to use for our test automation framework, we could take advantage of codeless testing tools.

Remember, Test automation is the process of performing software testing activities using Testing Automation Tools with little or no human interaction, to achieve higher speed and efficiency. So basically, these Testing Automation Tools can be scripted ones or codeless.

Final Thoughts

When we learn about test automation, we try to automate everything we can. In the paper, automating our testing duties frees us up for other valuable Testing work. But in practice, it rarely works in that way. My recommendation to all Automation Tester is to focus on repetitive tests and risk-based test scenarios.

Be aware than more test scripts mean slower execution time, and more time spent in maintaining those test scripts. Take advantage of Codeless Testing, and let's try to perform Test Automation smarter.

Happy Bug Hunting!??

References

Experiences of Test Automation: Case Studies of Software Test Automation - Dorothy Graham & Mark Fewster

Just Enough Software Test Automation - Daniel J Mosley & Bruce A Posey

Pragmatic Software Testing: Becoming an Effective and Efficient Test - Rex Black

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lensherman/2018/12/20/tesla-survived-manufacturing-hell-now-comes-the-hard-part/#5de48091fae2