In these tough times(COVID-19), the well-being of customers and employees is the most important for every organization.



During this unexpected crisis, there are teams working from home while there are few workplaces that have a reduced workforce. It is a given that the thoughts, efficiency, and availability of your team will not be the same as you may expect otherwise.



In these conditions, it is vital that the robustness of your software is not compromised.&nbsp;



Considering the disturbance that everyone in the world is going through, there will be a few tasks that you may not be able to do as planned, while there will be some important tasks still that will have to be done.



For optimum results, optimization of your team’s efforts will be key.



The development teams will have to focus on the optimization of delivery cycles to achieve business continuity on the basis of the availability and efficiency of the workforce.



A well-implemented continuous delivery process will be the solution here.



Below are some points which are important for all the teams including Dev &amp; QA for optimum and continued operations:



<div id="toc_container" class="no_bullets">Table Of Contents<ul class="toc_list"><li><a href="#People_Process_Business">1 People, Process, Business</a></li><li><a href="#1_People">2 1. People</a></li><li><a href="#2_Process">3 2. Process</a></li><li><a href="#3_Business">4 3. Business</a></li><li><a href="#Below_are_some_points_which_I_feel_are_important_for_Dev_QA">5 Below are some points which I feel are important for Dev &amp; QA :</a></li></ul></div>
<h3>People, Process, Business</h3> 



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<h3 id="1-people">1. People</h3>
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Focus on your team. Understand their strengths and patterns of working. When we are challenged by many odds, it would be hard to expect 100% from everyone. Some of them might not be used to working remotely. Give them time and better to over-communicate to fill the gap. 



There are some innovative ways to connect your teams remotely like online games, virtual tea-breaks and sharing photos and playlists. Do not hesitate to make use of them. Communication becomes a key challenge in these times. Schedule regular catch-ups with your team and don’t just focus on work-related talk.&nbsp;



This is the time to identify your champions who can deliver in any circumstances. If you are a small team or a start-up these are the people who can take your company to the next level. Encourage your champions and assign them the key areas to focus on. Give your teams the usual freedom and accountability to achieve the goals for the week.
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<h3 id="2-process">2. Process</h3>



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There might be a definite change in the productivity of your teams. Due to this almost every company has to change its priorities. Make sure you educate everyone about the change of priorities and make them align with the new plan. It might need some process changes as well. Your updates might need to be more frequent. 



There should be clear in and out times and appropriate status updates in the communication platforms. It will help everyone know when to expect others and when someone would be offline. 
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<h3 id="3-business">3. Business</h3>



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Don&#8217;t prioritize everything. The situation is very much uncertain. Just focus on what is required for business continuity, and wait for the things to get better. &nbsp;Start preparing for the emergency fund in case it might be needed in the near future. Stay focused on your current customers and work on your leads to get your next customers. Reduce unnecessary expenses and aggressively optimize the current process.&nbsp;



Many companies are going to see a steep fall in terms of numbers, very soon all these companies will stand a chance to grow much faster than the fall that we are going to see now. What is important is how you prepare yourself and the teams for that growth. Plan for the worst and get ready for the best!
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<h3 class="pt-15" id="below-are-some-points-which-i-feel-are-important-for-dev-qa">Below are some points which I feel are important for Dev &amp; QA :</h3>



1. Customer issues and requirements should become your mainstream development: It should be the case even otherwise if you don&#8217;t follow this already it&#8217;s time you change your strategy. Bring your core team here. Make sure you <a href="https://hiverhq.com/customer-support-guide" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">support all your customers</a> without fail. Don&#8217;t let this branch run by a secondary team.



2. Not the right time for big releases: If you have already planned a big release, it is good to hold until you get clarity. Simple things like stable network connectivity are also a problem to push your updates, there are many more odds that you need to think of.



3. Frequent minor updates are always better: If you are a SaaS business, it is recommended to release frequently with minor changes, so that the impact would be very few when things go wrong. During this time where communication, availability, and accessibility is difficult, it’s not the right time for major updates.&nbsp; 



4. Make sure your regression suites are lean and relevant: Your turn around time needs to be better than before. Create suites with affected test cases so that you can get things done quickly with fewer resources. If you have large test suites and take a long time for execution, parallel execution is one option. But, if you want to save more time, filter the high priority test cases and create another test suite that can be executed when time is running low.



5. Are your pipelines(DevOps) not automated yet? If not, it’s time to think about it: If you are a DevOps hub and all your pipelines are automated, you stand a better chance to release updates more often and continuously. If you don&#8217;t have your DevOps set up yet, it&#8217;s time for you and your team to understand the need and get started with it. Not just for now, It is going to add huge value to your company in the long term.



6. If you follow DevOps/Continuous Delivery practices, are your pipelines 100% automated? If that is the case you are all set to deliver continuously with fewer resources even at the difficult times, like what we are seeing now. If not, identify the gaps and try to automate your pipelines 100%. Perhaps you may not have approvals to try commercial tools. In that case, there are lots of free tools. You could also start with free versions of commercial tools and see how it works for you. Also, make sure that these tools scale to the next level when you as a team and the company go to the next level.



7. Don&#8217;t have test automation yet then this is the right time to start. Pick free tools to begin with: If you have worked on test automation, it would have been easy for you to continue your regular delivery cycles confidently.&nbsp; If not, in these times when resources are limited, it is all the more important to ensure quality because, in case of a failure, it may be a difficult task to fix with limited resources.



8. Start automating your regression suites: If you don&#8217;t have test automation yet, start implementing now. If your delivery cycles are not as usual or planned, your team might have time to start this activity.&nbsp;



9. Involve others in test automation if your tools support: If your SMEs &amp; QAs have free time during this time, it’s better to involve them in test automation. So that your delivery cycles would be faster later when things get back to normal. During this time, change of work also will help them focus more and they will give their best. If you are just starting with test automation, choose a test automation tool that allows other stakeholders including developers, managers, and clients to start test case creation with a low learning curve such that your automation tasks are completed even if the testing team is low in number.



10. Integrate your automated tests with your continuous integration pipeline: For end-to-end automation and continuous delivery, it is essential to integrate your testing with the CI/CD pipeline and having a tool that integrates with needed tools readily is the need of the hour.



11. Time to check your automation efficiency: If you have not measured your test automation ROI yet, take a look at it. Check how much it can save for you, with the investment that you have already made. When the team sizes are shrinking, can your test automation complement their errors? If not, understand why and where are the gaps and take necessary action if they are small. Again, don&#8217;t look at the changing processes during this time.



12. Take steps to reduce the number of feedback cycles and time for each of them: Since a lot of remote communication is involved now, try avoiding back and forth for your feedback. Also, try to reduce the number of feedback cycles, because there will be a significant communication delay for each cycle during this time.



We know that we can pull through, we just have to be careful, optimistic and focus on being efficient every step of the way.



If you need any help, we will always be available via the usual channels. Praying for the health and well-being of all! 



K R Naidu, CEO, Testsigma

Optimize Your Testing Efforts for Continuous Delivery

Test automation goes beyond regression testing new features. In-sprint test automation aims in developing a faster and reliable test automation in parallel to development.



<div id="toc_container" class="no_bullets">Table Of Contents<ul class="toc_list"><ul><li><a href="#Challenges_in_implementing_In-Sprint_Test_Automation_to_perform_Regression_Testing">0.1 Challenges in implementing In-Sprint Test Automation to perform Regression Testing</a></li></ul></li><li><a href="#Finding_the_right_tooltest_automation_framework">1 Finding the right tool/test automation framework</a></li><li><a href="#Lack_of_time_to_automate_in_short_sprints">2 Lack of time to automate in short sprints</a></li><li><a href="#Lack_of_a_unified_continuous_testing_platform">3 Lack of a unified continuous testing platform</a></li><li><a href="#Flexibility_to_enhance_the_toolframework">4 Flexibility to enhance the tool/framework</a></li><li><a href="#Demanding_technical_expertise">5 Demanding technical expertise</a></li><li><a href="#Availability_of_the_right_set_of_tools">6 Availability of the right set of tools</a></li><li><a href="#Teams_approach_within_the_sprint">7 Teams’ approach within the sprint </a><ul><li><a href="#Here_is_how_Testsigma_addresses_all_the_above_challenges">7.1 Here is how Testsigma addresses all the above challenges:</a></li></ul></li></ul></div>
<h3 id="challenges-in-implementing-in-sprint-test-automation-to-perform-regression-testing">Challenges in implementing In-Sprint Test Automation to perform Regression Testing</h3>



The Agile and DevOps approach allows no time between code complete and release. In-sprint test automation ensures maximum coverage within short release cycles. However, there are a few challenges in implementing In-sprint test automation.



For an in-depth study about regression testing and its aspects, check out the <a href="https://testsigma.com/regression-testing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="regression testing (opens in a new tab)">regression testing</a> guide.



<h2 id="finding-the-right-tool-test-automation-framework">Finding the right tool/test automation framework</h2>



The tool/ test automation framework should allow for writing automated tests even without access to the application UI so as to start the automation process with no time to waste and help create tests right from the design phase.



As we know, the UI undergoes many changes up until the last minute so it is always recommended to automate the API tests and perform unit tests first so that the bugs can be identified early on in the cycle.



Hence the tools must support different types of tests including unit and API tests along with UI automation.



<h2 id="lack-of-time-to-automate-in-short-sprints">Lack of time to automate in short sprints</h2>



In modern development practices like Agile and DevOps, the build is handed to the test team right after development(not at the same time in most cases)to find issues in the new feature and to fix them. All of this in one sprint cycle which may be a week or two long.



But as we all know, automation testing demands a significant amount of time not just the automation engineer&#8217;s but the developer’s and QA’s. During short development cycles, it is difficult to spare dedicated time for automation.



<h2 id="lack-of-a-unified-continuous-testing-platform">Lack of a unified continuous testing platform</h2>



Today, all modern businesses use not just web interface but Web, Mobile Web, Native Apps and APIs.



Every new feature needs to be tested in all these different application types to ensure a smooth user experience.



Hence, to automate different application types to avoid managing multiple tools to automate different application types, it is best to have a&nbsp;<a class="brand-color" style="box-shadow: unset;" href="https://testsigma.com/blog/why-unified-automated-testing-software-for-continuous-testing-in-agile-and-devops/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">unified automated testing framework</a>.



<h2 id="flexibility-to-enhance-the-tool-framework">Flexibility to enhance the tool/framework</h2>



The modern business is very dynamic and the requirements change very often. There may be a new design and approach for the product at any time.



The tool/framework must be flexible enough to enhance and optimize new automation requirements at any time.



The tool and framework should not demand you to start from scratch to address the new requirements.



<h2 id="demanding-technical-expertise">Demanding technical expertise</h2>



Automation done with legacy tools demand high technical skills from all the stakeholders. Most of the times teams may not have all the skill sets to automate testing. Most tools demand a steep learning curve and a deep technical understanding.



This makes it difficult for the teams to automate testing within a sprint. In order to implement automation testing within short cycles, writing automated tests should be made as simple as possible.



Automation Testing should be easy enough for Functional Testers who are new to the concept or the underlying complexity.



<h2 id="availability-of-the-right-set-of-tools">Availability of the right set of tools</h2>



As the cycles are very short, the timely availability of different tools in the test automation ecosystem is very critical for in-sprint test automation.



Teams spend a lot of time setting up test environments to execute tests. Instead, dynamically scalable pre-configured environments will save a lot of time to focus on the <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" href="https://testsigma.com/test-development" target="_blank">test development</a> process.



Continuous integration will automatically update the changes in the test environments.&nbsp;With this, the feedback will be automatic and quick.



An ecosystem with the right set of tools (with important elements like test environments, continuous integration environment, automated build, servers etc.) is a must for In-sprint test automation.



<h2 id="teams-approach-within-the-sprint">Teams’ approach within the sprint </h2>



Often teams execute sprints in mini-waterfalls which is not the right approach and things cannot be done in parallel.&nbsp;This needs to change. It is a must to follow Agile and start automation right from the design phase



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<h3 id="here-is-how-testsigma-addresses-all-the-above-challenges">Here is how <a href="https://testsigma.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Testsigma</a> addresses all the above challenges:</h3>



<ol><li>Testsigma’s simple English based test script development approach doesn&#8217;t depend on the application availability. You can start writing automated tests right from the design phase. It also supports both UI and API testing.</li><li>Testsigma’s<a href="https://testsigma.com/blog/natural-language-processing-nlp-based-test-automation/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)"> natural language based</a> approach requires very less time to automate your testing and automating your tests within the sprint now becomes a reality. Testsigma doesn’t demand programming skills to write automated tests but uses simple English to automate your tests. Writing automated tests is as simple as writing manual tests.</li><li>Testsigma is a unified <a href="https://testsigma.com/continuous-testing" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> continuous testing</a> platform to automate all your applications including Web, Mobile, Native apps and APIs. You don&#8217;t need to manage multiple tools to automate different types of applications.</li><li>Testsigma is simple and flexible and can be customized according to your testing requirements.&nbsp;</li><li>Testsigma is a complete ecosystem with all the essential components and integrations required for continuous testing.</li></ol>

In Sprint Test Automation Challenges for Regression Testing

In-Sprint Test Automation Challenges for Regression Testing

Continuous Delivery envisages the release of reliable software in fast-paced short cycles automatically and frequently. 
These short continuous release cycles ensure a faster time to market and reduced business risk associated with every release.
Continuous feedback is important in a DevOps environment for continuous improvement, to identify and fix defects early in the development cycle. Continuous actionable feedback through Continuous Testing helps to release software products faster into production with lesser defects.
Continuous feedback in the delivery pipeline from Functional Experts, stakeholders, QA Analysts, Testers ensures a speedy release of quality software with less or no errors.
A good deployment pipeline has feedback loops at all stages of the development lifecycle. Feedback is required not only on the quality of your code, but on the quality of your requirements, and the quality of your processes for delivering software. At each stage of the pipeline, verifications need to be run, not just acceptance tests.
Development teams need adequate information regarding a failure. Feedback should automatically include all the necessary information and actions to fix the issues and proceed in the pipeline quickly, for instance, specify which test failed, how it failed, and provide adequate steps for action with the supporting information.
<div id="toc_container" class="no_bullets">Table Of Contents<ul class="toc_list"><li><a href="#From_Passed_or_Failed_results_to_Actionable_feedback">1 From Passed or Failed results to Actionable feedback</a></li><li><a href="#Feedback_from_the_team_through_Team_Collaboration">2 Feedback from the team through Team Collaboration</a></li><li><a href="#Testsigma_Approach">3 Testsigma’ Approach</a></li><li><a href="#Chat_with_our_test_experts_and_learn_more_about_Testsigma">4 Chat with our test experts and learn more about Testsigma!</a></li></ul></div>
<h2>From Passed or Failed results to Actionable feedback</h2>
While delivery speed is the key, ensuring the right user experience is critical. Hence, businesses need to continuously test in real user scenarios to seamlessly release software.
Along with the speed of delivery, the reliability and immediate feedback from cross-functional teams play an important role in continuous testing to help improve the quality of software.
In the Continuous Delivery process, every software change is a release candidate that continuously undergoes Testing before deployment. 
In such short cycles, there wouldn’t be much time to scrutinize the test automation results, instead, it would be time saving and easier to quickly identify if the continuous testing platform could give a Yes or No automatically to decide if the release candidate is safe to proceed further in the delivery pipeline.
Additionally, if instead of simple Passed/Failed results of test automation, a platform that can analyze the business risk associated with test failures and be able to say Yes or No to allow your &#8220;release candidate&#8221; to move forward in the delivery pipeline automatically with actionable results will help analyze, debug and fix the cryptic failures.
The actionable feedback will not just help you to understand the build status, but also provide suggestions to take release decisions automatically. This feedback should include all the necessary information to fix the issues and proceed further in the pipeline instantly.
This approach will save both time and effort required to debug and analyze the test results to proceed.
With short release cycles, it is very difficult to analyze the cryptic results of all the failed tests and the affected areas.
Along with the feedback from the failed tests it is also required to identify potential failures upfront but automatically fix them and suggest those areas that might as well be affected.
Before we flag &#8216;Yes&#8217; or &#8216;No&#8217; to a release candidate, the platform should perform all necessary checks automatically to ensure the quality of the release(Exploratory testing would be a plus). 
Along with validating the functional requirements, we need to asses the system requirements, achieve maximum coverage and assess the performance automatically to ensure an uninterrupted existing user experience while adding new features.
An Agile organization that follows Continuous Delivery and a continuous feedback approach Continuous Delivery and continuous feedback with the help of an end to end automation process can ensure the release of quality software faster with less or no business risks.
As the roles are redefined in Agile and DevOps, cross-functional teams and just anyone can take part in Continuous testing. Hence, the results/feedback must be understandable for everyone including non-developers.
<h2>Feedback from the team through Team Collaboration</h2>
In addition to actionable results, team collaboration is also important in DevOps.
Cross-functional teams across different geographical locations need a common platform to communicate the ambiguities in the automated testing process.
Team communication is important for teams to function effectively and produce quality products. Feedback is fundamental not only to CI/CD but throughout the application development lifecycle. &nbsp;Feedback should be fast, and actionable and delivered in a way that lets teams respond rapidly. 
If the feedback is actionable and understandable to everyone, anybody can take the necessary steps to proceed further in the delivery pipeline. 
Traceability throughout the lifecycle is required for rapid response. Tailor your feedback process to fit your team. If an existing solution doesn’t fit or becomes outdated, You may need to create a new one that works. 
The main goal of continuous delivery is to make feedback loops shorter to ensure the reliability of software and analyze the business risk associated with it before the software reaches the competitive market. 
The continuous actionable feedback along the<a href="https://testsigma.com/blog/enhancing-robustness-ci-cd-pipeline-test-automation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Continuous Delivery pipeline</a> ensures the reliability of the software being released. A well-designed delivery pipeline that integrates the team, process and tools offer no scope for failure.
<h2>Testsigma’ Approach</h2>
Testsigma’s non-cryptic easy to understand feedback of all test runs help teams take effective actions immediately.
<a class="brand-color" style="box-shadow: unset;" href="https://testsigma.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Testsigma’s</a> inbuilt automatic feedback mechanisms in the form of instant notifications and automatic suggestions from AI on executions help make effective decisions on the go. The AI indicates areas of failure and those that might as well be affected due to change.
Shift Left is imperative to Agile development and delivery needs. You need to identify if your <a class="brand-color" style="box-shadow: unset;" href="https://testsigma.com/blog/test-automation-tool-ready-for-shift-left/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">test automation tool is shift-left ready</a>.
<a href="https://testsigma.com/blog/how-does-testsigma-support-the-shift-left-approach/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Testsigma is a strong advocate of Shift Left</a> testing. Testsigma allows testing at an early stage even before the application is fully available also as a part of every stage in the development lifecycle checking modifications as soon as they are introduced.
Integrations with collaboration tools like Slack lets you monitor execution updates, track and share the progress of tests automatically.
It is also easy to make changes to the automated tests since the test scripts are written in<a href="https://testsigma.com/blog/natural-language-processing-nlp-based-test-automation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> simple natural language</a> statements. Even complex test scenarios can be automated easily with the help of detailed feedback from within Testsigma and the collaborating team.
Testsigma gathers continuous actionable feedback and helps development teams prioritize these actions. Clear documentation and points on improvement are important in the application development cycle to achieve Continuous Testing.
<h2 style="text-align: left;">Chat with our test experts and learn more about Testsigma!</h2>

Importance of Actionable Feedback in Test Automation for Continuous Delivery

Actionable Feedback in Test Automation for Continuous Delivery

We are happy to announce that Testsigma is teaming up with Sauce Labs as part of the Technology Alliance Partner(TAP) program. Now you will be able to use the Sauce Labs platform directly from Testsigma!
<a class="brand-color" href="https://saucelabs.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener rel=">Sauce Labs</a>, an award-winning Continuous Testing Cloud ensures your favourite mobile apps and websites work flawlessly on every browser, operating system, and device and deliver a flawless digital experience.
<a class="brand-color" href="https://testsigma.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Testsigma</a> is an AI-driven Continuous Testing platform with a Shift-Left approach for web and mobile dependent businesses that matches today&#8217;s Agile and DevOps methodologies.
With the TAP program, Sauce Labs and Testsigma can together make it easier for enterprises to leverage automation testing strategies such as continuous testing, continuous integration and continuous delivery to shorten software lifecycles, improve quality and service levels and reduce operational costs.
 As cloud-native companies, our partnership offers a unique opportunity to turn automation testing, services into actionable insights and better business outcomes.
The Sauce Labs Technology Alliance Partnership (TAP) program will provide greater value to customers as we jointly develop integrations to enhance our Continuous Testing capabilities and makes it easier to integrate and use Testsigma more effectively and increase the test coverage while reducing the feedback time in faster delivery cycles.
With the integrated solution, enterprises can now test their applications autonomously on the Sauce Labs Continuous Testing cloud, accelerating their time to value, shortening release cycles, improving quality coverage, and lowering the total cost of quality. 
They can improve their continuous integration and delivery initiatives, increase developer productivity, and reduce infrastructure costs for software teams of all sizes.
“The joint offering allows users to fully and continuously test applications at the speed business demands, without spending millions of dollars on packaged solutions and reskilling their testing org.&#8221;
Enterprises often require automation testing services, needing responsive, flexible and often custom solutions. With this new partnership, stakeholders will have more options to address their specific situation, leveraging Sauce Labs’ progressive technology and Testsigma’s extensive automation testing expertise.
With several members worldwide, the Sauce Labs Technology Alliance Partner program includes technology partners with the shared goal to bring the best expertise and business solutions for each unique customer environment.
Learn more about the Technology Alliance Partner program, at <a href="https://saucelabs.com/company/partners/technology-alliance-program">https://saucelabs.com/company/partners/technology-alliance-program</a>
<a class="brand-color" href="https://testsigma.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Testsigma</a> is excited to be one among the selected partners to work with the customers to enjoy the full benefits of automated testing!
About Testsigma: 
An AI-driven Continuous Testing platform on cloud, Testsigma lets web and mobile dependent businesses to test releases continuously with a Shift-Left approach that matches today’s Agile and DevOps speed.
<a class="brand-color" href="https://testsigma.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Learn more about Testsigma</a> 
<a class="brand-color" href="https://twitter.com/testsigmainc" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Connect with us on Twitter!</a> 
<a class="brand-color" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/testsigma/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Connect with us on LinkedIn!</a>

Testsigma joins the Sauce Labs Partner program

Testsigma joins the Sauce Labs Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program

Test Automation has become an immediate requirement for every engineering team to match the pace of continuous delivery. On the other hand, it can also become a waste of time, money and resources if the test automation strategy and your Test Automation tool is not a fit for your requirements.
Generally, when teams <a class="brand-color" href="https://www.utest.com/articles/why-shift-from-manual-to-automation-testing-for-continuous-delivery" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">shift from Manual Testing to Test Automation</a>, they tend to look for the simplest and easiest solutions to get started. Record and playback tools are one of the options a lot of managers consider.
Near zero initial time and programming knowledge are some presumed advantages of choosing record and playback tools. The general perception is that initial investment of time and effort using these tools. But time and again it is being proved that such tools do not work well to meet enterprise-class test automation requirements.
However, it is agreed that these tools are not suitable for test automation if you have a user interface that constantly undergo changes. 
Tests created using Record and Playback tools are often outdated for even a small change in the application. You need to re-record all of the tests or you end up spending a lot of time editing tests.
<div id="toc_container" class="no_bullets">Table Of Contents<ul class="toc_list"><li><a href="#Getting_Started">1 Getting Started</a></li><li><a href="#Why_is_it_difficult_to_generate_stable_tests_easily_with_Record_and_Playback_tools">2 Why is it difficult to generate stable tests easily with Record and Playback tools?</a></li><li><a href="#Why_does_it_fail_to_handle_Dynamic_ObjectsElements">3 Why does it fail to handle Dynamic Objects/Elements?</a></li><li><a href="#Why_can8217t_Record_and_Playback_tools_avoid_maintenance_for_small_UI_changes">4 Why can&#8217;t Record and Playback tools avoid maintenance for small UI changes?</a></li><li><a href="#Why_do_these_tools_not_support_Shift-Left_Testing">5 Why do these tools not support Shift-Left Testing?</a></li><li><a href="#How_Record_and_Playback_tools_fail_to_maintain_a_shared_Element_Repository_to_reduce_maintenance">6 How Record and Playback tools fail to maintain a shared Element Repository to reduce maintenance?</a></li><li><a href="#Why_record_and_then_edit_doesn8217t_work">7 Why record and then edit doesn&#8217;t work?</a></li><li><a href="#Why_isn8217t_Re-record_an_option">8 Why isn&#8217;t Re-record an option?</a></li><li><a href="#So_where_do_Record_and_Playback_tools_fit">9 So, where do Record and Playback tools fit?</a></li></ul></div>
<h2>Getting Started</h2>
Many teams shifting from manual to automation might look at Record and Playback tools as the test scripts are created automatically for every action that a functional tester performs manually.
These scripts can be easily re-run to test the same functionality provided the application does not change.
It may seem easy and compelling but requires a lot of rework and changes. The system generated scripts or tests are hard to understand and maintain. 
We will look more into this in detail.
<h2>Why is it difficult to generate stable tests easily with Record and Playback tools?</h2>
It&#8217;s been proved that these tools would fail to generate stable and reliable tests for enterprise-class applications that has complex scenarios with dynamic data.
A lot of manual revisions are required to make the script generated by Record and Playback tools to be stable and production-ready like editing test data and element information, adding assertions, conditional statements, handling dynamic data etc.
Also, you cannot record all the steps for dynamic enterprise-class applications. You may need to add custom actions, assertions and, dynamic steps manually.
Record and Playback tools would record both necessary and unwanted steps automatically. The recorded steps would not be as per your business documents.
Quite often, for the same action, more than one copy of the same script is generated multiple times and the tester has to identify which copy of the script requires editing. It’s difficult to understand what part of the code belongs to the test steps, what is the exact data the tool collects that needs change.
A lot of time is spent cleaning unnecessary data to make the tests reusable and readable and in-line with your business documents/process.
Maintaining test scripts would be a complex task with a lot of duplicate and disorganized elements making your tests very difficult to understand and maintain.
AI &amp; ML can be helpful to maintain these tests for basic element attribute changes. But in reality, there can be more than just element attribute changes. 
There may be layout changes, design changes etc. in which case these duplicate elements requires a lot of maintenance work from developers.
The alternate approach would be to re-record all the steps from the beginning. However, this demands huge effort having to go through the entire process over and again. And, you may lose the test history.
Identifying the problem area first from the huge script that is auto-generated, making edits to the code and fixing them is a tough task. 
The time required to manually test an application vs the time to repair the recorded steps or re-record is relatively less.
The time saved getting started with the application testing is wasted editing and re-recording every time there is change. 

<h2>Why does it fail to handle Dynamic Objects/Elements?</h2>
Most of the modern applications are built with dynamic elements with no unique attributes. In such cases, record and playback tools rely on HTML element hierarchy/absolute paths which is the most unstable and unreliable approach to build automated tests.
These tests fail during subsequent re-runs, as the attributes of these dynamic elements change every time.
The ability to define dynamic element paths as part of element repository is required to handle these cases, which is missing in record and playback tools.
Also, these steps fail even for the slightest change in the application (not just the element attributes) and are not always dependable.
<h2>Why can&#8217;t Record and Playback tools avoid maintenance for small UI changes?</h2>
The slightest change in the recorded element or any element on the page can break the recorded tests easily.
Many of today&#8217;s testing tools capture more than just the required attributes to identify a particular element. This way, whenever there is a change in any one of these attributes, any of the remaining attributes can be used to identify those elements.
This has become a standard practice in many Test Automation tools. The approach is required to address some of the maintenance issues with element attribute changes. Some of the Test Automation tools like <a class="brand-color" href="https://testsigma.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Testsigma</a> use AI to create paths dynamically using the recorded attributes.
<a class="brand-color" href="https://testsigma.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Testsigma</a> not just uses the Dynamic Locator Strategy on element attributes but also takes into account the attributes of siblings and parent elements to solve this maintenance issue better!
Many a time, there would be more than just element attributes changes. These tools should consider the parent and sibling attributes of a particular element to ensure that the tests won’t break easily.
<h2>Why do these tools not support Shift-Left Testing?</h2>
It is essential to start the test automation process, early on, with the Agile and DevOps methodologies demanding faster, frequent software product releases. If testing cannot keep up with these modern approaches to ensure continuous software development and delivery, the goal is not fully achieved.
With these tools, you cannot start your Test Automation until you have a stable UI to automate.
Because of this either Test Automation will be pushed out of delivery pipeline or takes more time to release your quality products. Both these options are not acceptable for current fast-paced Agile and Continuous Delivery practices. 
<a class="brand-color" href="https://testsigma.com/blog/test-automation-tool-ready-for-shift-left/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Is your test automation tool ready for Shift Left testing?</a>


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<h2>How Record and Playback tools fail to maintain a shared Element Repository to reduce maintenance?</h2>
Whatever may be the approach, test maintenance is a continuous effort and plays a major role in automation success. Maintaining elements is highly important for test maintenance.
Record and playback tools generates a lot of duplicate elements as explained earlier and do not reuse the elements that are already available. This increases the need for test maintenance with the need to manage multiple instances of the same element.
The tools are expected to be smart enough to reuse the element if it is already recorded. None of the record and playback tools address this.
<h2>Why record and then edit doesn&#8217;t work?</h2>
Recorded test steps are not always stable and are not reusable by default and can break as the application code changes.
The recommended approach is to either edit these steps manually or re-record the entire test again.
To edit a recorded test you need to first understand the system generated test completely, then decide on what to change and how to change. This requires programming knowledge and constant reviewing. Without this, for every change in the application, these tests will continue to fail.
But the fact is that editing an automatically generated script is more difficult and time consuming compared to many programming based tools. 
Manually testing the same feature end to end takes less time and effort compared to editing these tests every time.
The purpose of Test Automation is to allow the automated tests to run unattended. On the contrary, testers are expected to sit through the whole of the execution process and find problem areas by looking them up manually and make changes to the generated code/test steps continuously. 
The test automation efforts go in vain as testers eventually shift back to Manual Testing.
<h2>Why isn&#8217;t Re-record an option?</h2>
An alternative to maintaining these tests is re-recording. 
 Re-recording the whole of the application for minor changes is not very convenient especially for large applications. 
The QA team has to go through the entire process of re-recording and editing the tests to make them stable and reliable.
Considering all the effort needed after recording, like editing, clean-up, etc., Re-recording is not an affordable solution for bigger teams who practice Agile and Continuous Delivery methodologies.
<h2>So, where do Record and Playback tools fit?</h2>
Record and playback tools can be considered for small static applications whose application code and UI does not change frequently.
 It would be appealing to the management to introduce the concept of Test Automation, what and how can be automated and how much time can be saved through Test Automation once the automated tests are in place.&nbsp;
The better approach would be test automation with the same simplicity of record and playback tools along with enterprise-class flexibility and stability.
Check out <a class="brand-color" href="https://testsigma.com/blog/alternative-to-record-and-playback-tools-for-enterprise-class-test-automation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">an alternative to record and playback tools for enterprise-class Test Automation</a>


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