Scope of Automation Testing: How AI Plays an Important Role?

Today, testers need to highly advanced techniques to ensure the quality of the software released at the speed of Agile/Continuous Delivery. Automation Testing is undoubtedly the best approach to testing in a continuous delivery cycle. And the scope of automation testing clearly has the right potential to change the direction of QA industry.

Every business will have an online presence and fast-changing application requirements to manage dynamic business requirements. Meeting the changing application needs in the growing number of devices in a short time using Automation Testing with an acceptable test coverage is not unrealizable but indecisive.

The cloud and SaaS have made it easy to scale testing from local environments and eliminate environment-related schedule delays. Still, as testing moves towards greater automation, the next level of automation would be for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning.

With little human input, the AI proves to be an useful aid to the testers to analyze and revamp the automated testing process. It enables testers to automate test cases, providing better efficiency and accuracy.

But AI in Automation?

Essentially put, AI is intelligent automation.

AI drives automation, performs faster to identify errors and causes, suggests fixes and connect a set of related tests. This not only makes test automation faster but also more precise.AI is capable of automatically accessing data, running tests and identifying errors and other relevant affected tests. This approach improves the quality of the tests.

Testsigma’s AI goes one step further and suggests fixes for a possible error. AI self-sufficient that is trained to manage huge amounts of data accurately, and the rate of error introduced is sure to reduce. So, you can not only use our AI-platform to execute code-less testing, but also manage your test data without any hassle.

It can make decisions automatically at runtime as to what locators to identify an element if one fails. And there is less need to worry about any change in the application since the AI can automatically correct “heal” itself.

What is Automation Testing?

Automation testing is the process of automating and checking software or applications under development (or developed) against user requirements. Typically, Automation testing includes validating different elements and modules of the application by executing test cases using automation tools. With Automation testing, you can eliminate the need to manually execute the test cases. Instead, testers can automate the test cases to save time and cost.

The scope of Automation testing is especially useful in running repetitive tasks that take up valuable time of QAs. For the uninitiated, Automation testing undertakes a lot of different testing types where you can simply run the test cases over and over again with several inputs. You can automate some aspects of Functional testing, Regression testing, and API testing easily, which will help speed up your overall QA process.

Why Automation Testing?

There are numerous benefits of adopting Automation testing besides just saving time and money on the process. Here is why you should adopt Automation testing for your business:

• Increases test case coverage
• Improves accuracy by eliminating unintentional human-borne errors
• Covers a wide range of inputs and user base (more than hundreds and thousands) that is not possible with manual testing
• Helps QAs and developers to quickly pin-point issues to look for a resolution
• Reduces Regression test timing by automating redundant test cases
• Helps to simulate a user-like environment to perform testing in a real-time scenario
• Offers a high ROI in the long run
• Supports reusability of test cases time and again, which again saves time and money on creating new test cases

Automation Testing Lifecycle

The automation testing lifecycle is a standard order in which testers conduct the complete testing process. It consists of sequential phases that you should follow to easily and accurately perform all your Automation testing requirements:

• Determine the scope of Automation testing to understand all the different elements that you can automate in your test cases
• Select the Automation testing tools that support your Automation testing scope
• Design and develop a test plan and corresponding strategy and cases to perform the testing processing correctly
• Setup the test environment to execute the test plan with inputs of different types and for different test types
• Create the test automation script as per your testing needs and execute the same in the right tool chosen in the second step
• Analyze the test results after completing the test case execution.

The Scope of Automation Testing

The scope of Automation testing highly depends on the needs of the particular business. For some, it is to identify the right tools for Automation testing, while for others, it means determining the team size to execute Automated testing. But in common, the Automation testing scope is about understanding what your business testing requirements are and how you can automate them using the right set of tools. You can automate Functional, Performance, Regression, and other automation testing types to reduce your manual workload.

Why AI?

AI is the technology of today and the future that is positively influencing every industry sector, including Automation testing. As one of the biggest contenders for the future scope of Automation testing, AI helps understand complex data and handle redundant tasks. Moreover, it is useful in predicting potential bugs and analyzing output information. We discuss all of this in detail in the next section.

What are the Advantages of AI in Automation Testing?

AI is bringing a whirlwind of changes in every department, and Automation testing is not immune to it. So, here are some of the advantages of AI in Automation testing that will help your business soar:

No Unattended Errors

The testers can take the back seat and let AI perform the tests with less or no intervention. As soon as a bug is introduced, the AI alerts the tester of the error, the reason for failure, and possibility of a potential fix. It further analyzes the scope of automation testing to suggest quick fixes.

Improved Quality

AI not only makes testing faster but also improves the quality by processing huge amounts of data at a time to identify similar error trends and identifying anomalies.

Quick Feedback

As the AI testing process is automatic, the software developers and testers will get a quick feedback report on the working and the efficiency of the applications. Also, there is the quick resolution of the bugs, which reduces the time-to-delivery and helps to launch the products faster into the market.

Actionable Continuous Feedback is Crucial in DevOps

Read about the importance of actionable feedback for continuous delivery. Machine Learning/AI can identify errors very early and suggest necessary recommendations in the form of readable and actionable error messages problematic tests. The findings and suggestions assists the DevOps team to ensure that the application works flawlessly.

Effective Automation Testing

With AI in automated testing, you can increase the overall depth and scope of tests resulting in the overall improvement of software quality. Automated software testing can look into data sets, locator values, repositories, internal program states in order to determine if the software is behaving as expected. AI can help you right set of tests to be run for the application changes to provide a good test coverage with optimized testing efforts that is not possible with just Automation Testing.

Manage Redundant Tasks

AI driven test automation can manage repetitive tasks to meet the continuous delivery demands for increased productivity. AI is well suited for Regression testing to compare the result trend with the existing code to identify all the affected areas so that the developers can work on them.

Less Expensive

AI reduces the reliability of manual testing methods by reducing a lot of the manpower resources and also the intensive costs.

Smart Recommendations

It is not required that the entire test suite be run for every small change that is made. The AI can recommend what tests are affected due to change.

Autonomous

Automatically locates and identifies hundreds of selectors and self corrects/heals them if one selector fails. Testsigma uses a dynamic locator strategy to identify elements that make the tests more robust and reliable with reduced maintenance efforts.

Fully autonomous test creation utilizing AI technologies via natural language processing (scriptless test automation) and advanced modeling and can point out poor coding. With this information, the DevOps teams may work better in order to produce error-free results.

Test Maintenance

With AI in many areas in automation, testers need not update test cases and continuously keep track of the changes. AI in Test Automation allow tests to be auto corrected to some extent, maintaining all the affected tests automatically in one go!

Extensibility

The new era of Smart Test Automation has a lot of scope to become much better with AI.

AI extends the scope of automation testing, making it possible for non-technical team members too to define and scale tests. In short, AI boosts test automation by streamlining creation, execution, maintenance and time-to-market with actionable feedback in real-time.

What are some areas where AI can be applied?

Check out this article that discusses the areas of Automation Testing where AI can be applied.

Conclusion

This method of writing tests first also with the shift left approach has become popularized as a good practice for automation testers. However, it is sometimes not exercised at all. (Why?) With artificial intelligence’s solutions, this would be easier. Businesses implementing AI at the enterprise level are already experiencing greater operational efficiency and better productivity results.

Automation gives organizations an opportunity to replace mundane, repetitive processes. Automation combined with the gathering input, analyzing data, efficiency-finding, and even making decisions of AI will make a great pact for the future, and it is now with the new era of smart automation!

And, with the timely involvement of testers to validate their actions, quality is assured.Try Testsigma now!

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):

What is the future scope of Automation testing?

The future scope of Automation testing is promising because of the use of technological tools. And while these Automation tools will run the test cases and provide the results, businesses would still need professionals to understand how to use these tools and make sense of the output.

What is the future scope of Selenium testing?

Selenium testing has a bright future as one of the most popular test automation frameworks. The tool is easy to use and supports code-based testing that many QAs and even developers are comfortable with.

What is the impact of AI on automation?

AI will help to organize, test, and analyze a large amount of structured and unstructured data to highlight software issues. It can further predict potential future bugs and offer ahead-of-time assistance to manage the testing process.

Suggested Reading

Is AI Really Important In Software Test Automation?

Application of Artificial Intelligence.

Benefits of Automation Testing

Top Test Automation Challenges

ETL Test Automation

Top 20 Online Automation Testing Courses

Build Test Automation Framework 

Top Automation Tester Skills

Agile Automation Testing in SaFe

Elements of Test Automation

Top Test Automation Mistakes