Why Use Automation Testing Tools in Accelerated Development cycles

  
Software Testing is not a new concept and extends way back. There was a time when Software Testing was considered inessential but today Testing begins at the same stage as Development!

Software Testing at a later stage is not creditable in today’s accelerated deployment cycles however testing has evolved over time with applications becoming complex. It has become a must to meet the changing Continuous Delivery demands.

For a successful DevOps, Automation Testing is the best approach for quick releases of high quality builds. If the builds are continuously tested every time before release, there is better quality and better test coverage with fewer defects. With Manual Testing, this cannot be done easily.

Is Manual Testing becoming a bottleneck in your Continuous Delivery? discusses a few major challenges of manually testing an application in accelerated development cycles. Manual Testing can begin only once when atleast a part of the application UI is available and already lags one step behind Development.

Testing should actually begin as early as the requirements analysis phase for a clear understanding of the requirements of the product to perform a detailed testing and to analyze what approach needs to be adopted. The concept of Shift Left Testing revolves around this. Manual Testing falls short here.

Check out Is your automation testing tool ready for Shift Left testing? for a quick understanding of the advantages of Shift Left Testing and the importance of testing early and often and thereby reducing the dev-complete/test-complete gap.

Introducing Test Automation

To ensure faster continuous delivery of quality software with lesser ROI payback time, Manual Testing is not enough.

Automation Testing is a better alternative to Manual Testing to ensure the Continuous Delivery of quality software in accelerated development cycles.

A fully automated testing process has to be a part of the SDLC. If Testing is done beforehand, application flaws become evident as they are executed. Hence, its access to further stages of the development process can be prevented.

The sooner they appear, the better. It is easier to fix them with a less number of resources in a reduced time as opposed to its appearance at the final stages of the product delivery cycle.

Test Automation is the management of testing activities, to include the development and execution of test scripts so as to verify the test requirements, using an automation testing tool particularly beneficial for regression testing when the test suites are repeatedly run.

In automated testing, the tests are written once and repeatedly run automatically. This saves a lot of manual time and effort while also improving the test coverage. Automation Testing is done with the help of top automated testing tools. The most popular being Selenium.

Why do we have to automate the tests? Isn’t manual testing enough?

There’s no denying that humanized efforts are the best since there is no way a programmed AI beats human creativity and exploratory skills. But, repetitive recurring executions need to be automated. Current accelerated development cycles demand that tests be automated.

Let’s look at a few disadvantages of Manual Testing:

• As we discussed, a dev-complete and test-complete during the application availability wait
• Delay in setting up test environments for each tester
• Difficulty to retest continuous updates and changes. Automation Testing scripts need only be written once and can be executed any number of times repeatedly.
• Test Environment setup, time and cost for each tester
• Less feedback time

Refer for a more detailed discussion on Manual Testing and its challenges.

Current accelerated development cycles

Current accelerated delivery cycles demand teams to continuously deliver new builds into production as rapidly as possible at speed with absolutely no compromise on the quality.

The builds committed by developers are continuously tested every time before release. Automated tests are executed as part of the software delivery pipeline to obtain immediate feedback on the execution results. They are often tested to ensure that there is better quality and better test coverage with less or no defects.

The goal of Agile and DevOps practices is to close the gap of development through delivery activities in fulfilment of the business activities through an automated continuous development, testing and delivery.

End-to-end test automation testing practices are intended to integrate QA into existing fast-paced Dev and Ops processes as a means to create continuity while maintaining faster accelerated development cycles.

Automation Testing done right with the right Automation Testing Tools

It takes significant time and effort to set the Test Automation ecosystem of the test automation framework, right tools and integration, test environments and well-managed data. A good test automation tool will have all of this inbuilt ready to let you get started.

A sudden shift towards Automation Testing can be a bit overwhelming for functional testers new to the concept of Automation testing. It is the Automation Testing tool that should allow for a smooth transition from Manual Testing to Automation Testing.

With the automated testing tool we discussed, Selenium, this isn’t an easy road. Selenium requires programming knowledge and Selenium test scripts are difficult to maintain with objects and attributes as the UI keeps changing. Often, they aren’t always reliable with a lot of false positives that occur due to timeout on elements and not being able to connect to the test server.

Check out the Challenges with Selenium-backed Automated Regression Testing and how an alternative tool like Testsigma addresses these challenges.

This requires huge initial time, cost and resources also to maintain them and even with all of this set up, the Return On Investment is only gradual.

However, there are better alternatives tools to Selenium that uses a less complex automation testing approach and short learning curve.

Now comes the question, is Automation Testing enough?

Today, Testing is not just an afterthought and has emerged to match the Agile and Continuous Delivery standards. It is a systematic approach towards improvement.

It is not enough to just automate the testing process. Test Automation needs to be extended to meet the accelerated development cycles. The transformation of automated test processes is to keep up with the advancements in ensuring continuous delivery of the product. Read more on extending test automation for today’s development cycles.

One needs to perform test automation in a way that suits today’s complex application and continuous delivery needs.

With the advent of smart test automation tools, all these shortcomings of existing Automation Testing tools are addressed and have paved way for a new era of smart test automation that makes even complex Automation Testing easy with no requisites to get started and allows Functional Testers to make a move towards Automation Testing right away!

A New era of Smart Automation for Accelerated Agile and Continuous Delivery practices

With the advent of smart test automation tools, the shortcomings of Automation Testing tools are addressed and have paved way for a new era of smart test automation that makes even complex Automation Testing easy with no requisites to get started and allows Functional Testers to make a move towards Automation Testing right away.

Let’s take a quick look at the benefits of advanced automation testing tools of today:

Smart test automation testing tools like Testsigma comes inbuilt with a test automation ecosystem and does not require installation or application UI availability. Testsigma lets you get started with automation testing and provides instant access to 1000+ real web, desktop, mobile devices.

• Scriptless automation testing. Testsigma adopts a scriptless automation testing approach lets you write complex automated tests in plain English without having to write a single line of code
• Reusable test steps for repetitive testing scenarios like login
• Dynamic and Scalable Test Environments
• Parallel executions across many different environments to save execution time and improve test coverage. Testsigma lets you run tests in parallel across many different test environments to cut down your build time.
• Provides a unified platform for Web and Mobile devices and API services’ testing
• CI/CD Integrations for Continuous delivery and integrations with collaboration tools like Slack
• Comprehensive reports for each test environment and access to debugging tools
• Access to real desktop & mobile browsers:  Testsigma lets you run automated tests on 1000+ Real Desktop & Mobile Browser combinations available on the cloud.
• Continuous Testing for Agile and DevOps Teams
• Shift-left approach and seamless integrations with CI/CD tools to ensure the quality of your applications in continuous delivery practices.
• Dynamic and customizable reports with text logs, screenshots, video recordings and many more to help you analyze results faster.
• A dynamic support team. Testsigma offers unbiased support to paid and unpaid customers round the clock instantly.

The right automation testing tools enable organizations to release incremental deliverables with quality and efficiency and yield a good return on the investment. With so many options, enterprise teams need to choose the right automation testing solution to develop, test and analyze continuously in reduced continuous delivery cycles.

A free trial and a quick walk through demo will help decide what ultimately works for your testing requirements.

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