Why Test Automation? Automated Testing Benefits and Tips
Testing is one of the crucial parts of product development, especially when it comes to ensuring quality. Many small and medium-sized businesses ignore testing, even though it is critical for delivering a high-quality product.
Some businesses prefer manual testing, but it is not the best approach. When you have tests in place, the next logical step is to automate your testing process. Manual testing is a time-consuming and tedious task, and test automation assists teams in overcoming these challenges and achieving time, cost, and effort savings. It also enables organizations to be more agile in their development process.
Furthermore, test automation improves overall software development efficiency and enables the development of more robust tools. This article delves into some of the advantages of test automation—get let's started!
What is Test Automation?
Test automation is a software testing method that employs automation solutions to execute tests. It then generates a report that compares the results to the expected results, assisting teams in determining the quality of their applications. Rather than replacing manual testing, test automation may enable quality engineers to test more in less time and with less effort.
Why Test Automation?
Software development teams spend tons of time testing the product; unfortunately, the delivered software is always flawed. Even with most recommended manual testing processes, test engineers strive to catch them before the product is released.
However, they always creep in and frequently reappear. The best way to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, and coverage of your software testing is to use test automation software.
During development cycles, manual tests are repeated for source code changes and other situations, such as multiple operating environments and hardware configurations. Here are some benefits of software automation tools that can help you ease the testing process.
Benefits of Test Automation
Now that we've covered the basics, let's look at the key benefits of automation testing to help you decide whether automation testing is the right choice for your company.
1. Increase in Test Coverage
With test automation, particularly no-code, you can test applications of any size, end-to-end, in minutes or hours with a few mouse clicks. This allows you to test more features across a broader range of applications and configurations, resulting in greater coverage and higher quality.
Extensive test coverage also increases the likelihood of detecting bugs early in the development process, reducing production issues and providing an unsatisfactory user experience.
2. Allows Reusability
Writing scripts and operating them over and over again is a major headache. You don't have to write test cases or run them manually when the codebase changes with no-code test automation. Instead, your solution generates test scripts that you can reuse and run as needed without additional effort or cost. Your efforts will be reduced even further if your automation solution includes pre-built keywords.
3. Regression Testing
Every developer has complained about regression testing. Repeating the same test takes more time and reduces a tester's efficiency. Due to time constraints, one cannot perform manual regression testing thoroughly every time the software is updated. You are unsure whether you conduct tests in the same manner each time.
This is why automation testing is an excellent method for performing regression testing. One can always extend the time window for running the regression testing suite. Furthermore, the time spent developing an automated test case is a one-time effort, which brings us to our next significant advantage of automation testing.
4. Cross-Browser Testing
Manual testers must first identify the browser that their web application must support. After creating a browser checklist, they run a single test on various browser + OS configurations to see how well their web development efforts are paying off.
When you have a large audience to cater to, achieving adequate test coverage may appear to be a nightmare. Manual cross-browser testing may seem impossible to prepare your website for every customer question, from legacy to the most recent browser.
5. Data-Driven Testing
Data-driven testing is an essential advantage of automation testing. It enables you to run your test cases to validate the functionality that various data sets can trigger. Some of its benefits include:
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The ability to test any application with multiple data values sets when performing regression testing.
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Group verification and test data into a single file and separate it from test case logic.
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Maintain test scripts in a single repository.
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reuse functions and actions across multiple tests
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Reduce the number of test scripts and cases.
6. Saves Effort, Time, and Money
Manual testing entails a massive testing effort and higher costs. Because of the growing number of applications, the cost and effort only increase exponentially. You can run tests repetitively with test automation and not worry about the extra costs.
It is also quicker. Unlike manual testing, which is limited to 8 hours per day, automated testing can run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This translates to faster functional delivery and a shorter time to market.
When teams think about automation, the first thing that comes to mind is the high initial setup and implementation cost. However, the higher the long-term cost of manual testing is frequently overlooked—the greater the automation coverage, the greater the ROI.
Tips for Test Automation
There are numerous reasons why test automation is advantageous, and by following automated testing best practices, you can ensure that your testing strategy provides the highest return on investment (ROI). Automated testing will help you shorten development cycles, avoid tedious, repetitive tasks, and improve software quality, but where do you begin?
These practices build a solid foundation for improving the quality of your software. Use the following top tips to ensure the success of your software testing and the maximum return on investment (ROI):
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Choose which test cases to automate.
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Choose the best automated testing tool.
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Segregate your automated testing resources.
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Produce high-quality test data.
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Create automated tests that are immune to UI changes.
Wrapping up
Automation testing is the most efficient way to achieve testing objectives while conserving resources and time. However, you should be careful when selecting an automation tool. Before you automate your testing, make sure you have a skilled team. Otherwise, your tool will sit on the shelf, yielding no ROI. We'd like to hear about your Automation Testing experience; any real-world experience will always benefit our readers.