Automation requires deep understanding of the process and constant practice along with following basic guidelines. Automation Testing seems to be every tester’s dream. Majority of the testers strive to be automation testers but only few come through it. Profound testing is crucial to the success of a software product. In the tough competition of product launches, if your software doesn’t work properly, it is evident people will not buy or use it for long.
At the same time, testing to find defects, bugs or errors is time-consuming, expensive, and often repetitive and subject to human error. Automated testing, in which Quality Assurance teams use software tools to run detailed, repetitive and data-intensive tests automatically, helps teams improve software quality and make the most of their always-limited testing resources. Automated testing helps teams test faster, allows them to test substantially more code, improves test accuracy and frees up QA engineers so they can focus on tests that require manual attention and their unique human skills.
Note down these simple measures that will help you to be the kind of automation tester that you aim to be. These practices can ensure a successful testing and achieve maximum ROI.
Keep in mind the basics of testing
Not only for a tester but for every field, learning is a never ending process. So, keep revising your knowledge every now and then. Automation Testing is known to be a little more inclined towards technology in the testing area itself. Automation testing is nothing but a mere evaluation of steps the program must perform, writing a detailed instruction.
Start Early & Test Often
For best results of automation testing, be quick to start early in the development cycle and run as often as needed. Involvement of the testers at an early stage in the life cycle of the project gives better results and the more you test, the more bugs you find. Initiate automated unit testing on day one and then gradually build your automated test suite. Bugs detected early are a lot cheaper to fix than those discovered later in production or deployment.
Recognize basic coding concepts
Codes at the first look may seem incredibly complex. But once you try your hand at coding, it will be easy for you as you will understand the procedures at once. You can easily extrapolate your knowledge to any language. So give yourself ample time to thoroughly familiarize with these concepts.
Select the Right Automated Testing Tool
Selecting an automated testing tool is very essential for test automation. The best way to get used to a tool is exploring its features one by one. Consider these key points when selecting an automated testing tool:
- Support for your platforms and technology. What applications are you testing and on what operating systems?
- Flexibility for testers of all skill levels. Can your QA department write automated test scripts or is there a need for keyword testing?
- Feature-rich but also easy to create automated tests. Does the automated testing tool support record-and-playback test creation as well as manual creation of automated tests?
- Does it include features for implementing checkpoints to verify values, databases, or key functionality of your application?
- Create automated tests that are reusable, maintainable and resistant to changes in the applications UI. Will your automated tests break if your UI changes?
Strive to improve your work
Always think of ways to make better thing best. Revising and striving to improve your projects is a way to improving your skills and driving you on to newer heights. Can you make it more readable? Can you achieve the result in fewer lines of code? Can you reuse some of the components? Can you avoid using as many variables as you did? Is your program memory efficient? Can you make it run any faster? These few questions can be kept in mind and worked upon.
Create Good, Quality Test Data
Creating test data for your automated tests is boring, but you should invest time and effort into creating data that is well structured. With good test data available, writing automated tests becomes a lot easier. The earlier you create good-quality data, the easier it is to extend existing automated tests along with the application’s development.
Practice a lot
Always remember testing is a verification and validation process. It allows you to conclude if the code is functional or not. Write tests in a way that each one has a pass and fail criteria clearly defined. Make sure it does not give out the raw results, but the clear answer: yes or no, test passed or failed.
Adopting the recommended best practices mentioned here are simple and obvious. Following them will help you build a solid foundation for your automated testing process that promotes high software quality. You will be able to run tests faster, test more code, improve the accuracy of your tests and will help in improving your skills and becoming a better tester – an automation tester.
