Top Practices to Follow for Sustainable Test Automation
Test automation is at the forefront of the transformation in the software development landscape, enabling teams to deliver high-quality software faster than before. Therefore, knowing and implementing the best practices in test automation is essential. The blog discusses essential sustainable test automation best practices to help you stay ahead, ensuring your automation strategy is scalable and aligned with industry trends.
Sustainable Automation Practices
Some of the sustainable automation practices to help you facilitate quick, successful, and accurate automation tests are:
Design Reusable Test Scripts
- Create automated test scripts with tiny and modular functions that can be reused by testers across tests to reduce redundancy and simplify maintenance.
- Implement design patterns like the page object model to abstract the web application components and make test scripts more maintainable.
Prioritize and Automate Stable Tests
- Automate stable tests such as regression and smoke tests. Avoid automating tests for features that change often.
- Check out the price and benefit of automating each test case. Prioritize those test cases with the best return on investment in terms of efficiency and defect detection.
Use Data-Driven Testing Instead of Hard-Coded Tests
- Store test data in databases rather than embedding it in the test scripts to allow running the same tests with different data sets.
- Use data-driven testing to easily organize test data, improve test coverage and flexibility.
Incorporate CI/CD into Automation
- Combine automated tests into your CI pipeline to ensure tests are run automatically with each code change.
- Set up notifications to identify and rectify test failures that arise during CI builds.
Regular Testing for Quality Assurance
- Beginning automated testing in the SDLC can find bugs before, so you can save time, resources, and effort spent on resolving the issues.
- Regular testing iterations reinforce the importance of consistent evaluation. Automated tests that run frequently provide a continuous feedback loop, highlighting changes in the application. So, a regular testing approach can detect regressions promptly, track improvements, and ensure apps quality is stable throughout development.
Benefits of Sustainable Test Automation
The benefits of sustainable test automation include:
Optimal Resource Utilization
Testing is a continuous process. Every time code is changed, developers should test it across configurations, user journeys, and operating systems. Manual testing takes a lot of time and can be expensive with minimal return on investment. With test automation, these tests can be executed without extra cost, even when testing needs to be done faster.
Fast Feedback Execution
Maintainable test automation relies on feedback, and the loop between testers and developers is pivotal in delivering quality services to ensure higher customer satisfaction. Fast feedback leads to less downtime and quicker bug fixing. As well as if the product has been released, fix errors without sabotaging customer information and experience.
Enhanced Test Coverage
Enterprise apps require a big team and more time for end-to-end testing. However, with no-code automation testing, apps of all sizes can be analyzed rapidly and easily with just a click. Increased test coverage enables developers to test more features and configurations for smooth application development. In addition, extensive coverage increases the probability of finding bugs in the development phase, reducing poor user experience and production issues.
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Early Bug Detection
Identifies bugs early in development, preventing expensive fixes. Test automation streamlines reporting, allowing developers to access screenshots and videos of the execution steps, making it easier to find and rectify errors.
Supports Continuous Testing
Continuous testing involves running automated tests continuously to receive feedback on business risks. It improves bug feedback, making continuous testing integral to the DevOps process and enabling teams to work collaboratively.
Challenges of Test Automation Maintenance
The main challenges of test automation maintenance are:
- Keeping test scripts up to date with application changes.
- Managing flaky tests that produce unreliable results.
- Handling the overhead of a growing number of tests.
- Continuously adapt to technology and CI/CD pipeline changes.
- Requires skilled engineers with programming and framework-specific expertise.
SUGGESTED READ - Why test automation fails?
Why is Test Automation Not Sustainable?
Test automation is unsustainable due to high maintenance, the continuous need for expert developers and testers, flaky tests, and the misguided goal of automating everything. These challenges can lead to huge costs, time wastage, and an unreliable testing process, leading to mistrust and impacting the intended benefits of test automation.
Conclusion
In the dynamic software development landscape, test automation has been in need of an hour. Implementing sustainable test automation into your testing process ensures robust functionality, makes the software sustainable, and later delivers superior user experiences.
ACCELQ is a continuous test automation platform for functional and API testing needs. With its natural language-based interface for test development, it is built for real-world challenges in test automation. Best Practices are embedded at every stage of the process, and script resilience is ensured with autonomics-based self-healing techniques.
Book a free demo to learn more about how ACCELQ can complement your efforts in building a sustainable test automation suite.
Chaithanya M N
Content Writer
A curious individual who is eager to learn and loves to share her knowledge using simple conversational writing skills. While her calling is technology and reading up on marketing updates, she also finds time to pursue her interests in philosophy, dance and music.
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