Test Automation: A Beginner’s Guide

In this era of Agile and DevOps, software releases take place on a more frequent basis. Contrary to releases that took place in two to three years, nowadays, software upgrades are rolled out on a weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly basis. Keeping pace with the speed of development has become a challenging task, giving way to test automation. Moreover, manual testing is considered a bottleneck in achieving continuous testing. In this guide, we will highlight what test automation is, its advantages over manual testing, and what you should look for in an automated testing tool.

What is test automation?

In test automation, test scripts are created and executed with the help of software. Contrary to manual testing where human testers give commands and input data to execute a test, automated tests follow series of commands and submits data wherever necessary. Then, the report is created to analyze the results of the tests.

What types of tests can be automated?

Regression Testing: It is a software testing practice in which existing functionalities of an application are tested to validate whether the existing features still work as intended after changes to code are made or new features are rolled out.

A perfect use-case of regression testing is Oracle Fusion Cloud quarterly updates. Oracle rolls out updates four times a year, asking customers to perform regression testing to validate that nothing has broken. In such a situation test automation is considered as a viable solution due to the frequency of the updates.

Smoke Tests: These tests cover critical business processes. These are performed to check whether a new build software is ready for more in-depth testing. Once the smoke testing is done successfully and the application passed through it, it will be handed over to the quality assurance team. If the application fails in smoke testing, it will be returned to the development team.

Integration Tests: Disparate applications are often connected with the help of integration. Whenever any of the applications under integration undergoes an update, integration tests need to be executed to ensure seamless interaction between applications. Such tests are also a use-case of automated testing as vendors roll out application upgrades on a more frequent basis. Whenever these upgrades are rolled out, testing needs to be performed.

Performance Tests: It is critical as it ensures that an application can handle real-world usage. By automating performance testing, quality assurance teams can easily check whether applications meet user expectations and perform seamlessly under various load conditions.

What is the main purpose of test automation?

Speed: Manual testing is time consuming and laborious. By automating repetitive tasks, automation speeds up the testing time, allowing users to focus on more critical tasks. Furthermore, faster testing speed means shorter release cycles, allowing testing teams to keep up with the speed of development.

Risk Coverage: One of the biggest drawbacks with manual testing is limited coverage. Running too many test cases manually doesn’t guarantee adequate test coverage in software testing. Test automation addresses this challenge by ensuring that only the right set of test cases are executed. Leveraging AI, test automation tools recommend test cases to cover the critical business processes that are at risk due to updates. Risk based coverage ensures that business continuity remains intact.

Scalability: Manual testing can only be achieved by increasing the number of human resources. However, automated testing provides you the privilege to scale up by increasing the number of machines and virtual agents.

Cost-effective: Many business owners believe that test automation can be an expensive choice. However, in the long term, if you compare it with the cost of bug leakage or system downtime, automation will prove to be a cost-effective choice.

Final Thought

In this era of Agile and DevOps, automated testing is not a matter of preference, it is a necessity. Innovative enterprises need to invest in test automation to keep pace with their digital transformation initiative. However, they need to understand that it would be wise on their part if they brought in a no-code test automation platform as business users can operate it without requiring extensive coding knowledge.

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