A Beginner’s Guide To Creating an Automation Test Suite

In automation testing, software tools are used to automate manual review and validation of software products. Today, most agile and DevOps software projects include automated testing from the outset. But for a true understanding of automated testing, you must know about all the details involved in it and this is exactly what this blog-post offers!

What Is Automated Testing?

As part of automated software testing, testers execute test cases by utilizing automated software tools. Performing repetitive and resource-heavy tasks that are difficult to do manually can be saved by automating the test suite. Automating the test suite saves time and effort. To release quality software products faster than ever before, every software-dependent business must invest in automated software testing with today’s modern development architecture and delivery methods. In addition to simplifying the testing processes with a minimum amount of effort, automated software testing also reduces software release costs and time to market and improves software quality.

Significance  Of Automation Testing

In order to ensure quality software, software testing is an essential part of the software development life cycle (SDLC). With advanced applications and connected devices in place, it is necessary to have Test Automation to ensure faster and more reliable releases. Earlier, manual testing was a major mode of testing, but now Test Automation is essential for ensuring faster and more reliable releases.

Despite the fact that many companies are smaller or mid-sized, they continue to adopt best practices for test automation in order to provide their clients with high-quality products. Automation in testing for enterprises leads to a faster feedback cycle, which in turn leads to faster validation at various stages of product development.

Automation testing also has the advantage that the testing procedure becomes automated since the test scripts are executed by automated tools instead of human resources. In addition to improving communication between DevOps, QA teams and product owners who rely on automated tests, test automation also allows enterprises to improve their communication between DevOps, QA teams and product owners.

The most imperative thing to remember is that automation testing is best suited to applications that must be tested in different versions, platforms, and operating systems at the same time. In test automation, multiple conditions and scenarios are tested using repeatable, repeatable tests that can be run multiple times.

In order to see if it fails under real-time conditions, regression tests and high-risk functionality tests are best used. With effective automated software testing, businesses are able to avoid any probable loss due to the failure of their application.

Types Of Automated Testing

Our next step is to examine the types of automated testing that are included in automated test suites.

• Unit Testing:

The first type of automation testing involves testing the individual components of an application. This type of test is usually written by developers, but sometimes automation testers can also write it. During the software development phase, these tests are usually conducted.

• Smoke testing:

Testers will accept a build for further testing if it is stable. If it is not stable, it will be sent back to the developers as an unstable build, and if it is stable, it will be accepted as a stable build for further testing.

• Black box testing:

In this type of testing, we conduct checks to check whether any functions are incorrect or missing, whether there are any interface errors, whether there are any behaviour-related or performance errors, and also whether there are termination errors.

• Integration testing:

It basically checks and verifies how data communicates between different application modules by integrating them logically and testing them together.

• Functional testing:

During this type of testing, APIs, databases, security and the overall functionality of the application are tested to make sure everything works as expected.

• Regression testing:

A comprehensive testing methodology is used to verify that all existing features work as intended regardless of recent changes to the code. By doing this, the old code is checked to see if it still works before any changes are made.

Automated Testing Vs. Manual Testing

Automated testing differs significantly from manual testing in the following ways:

• Testing in automated mode does not require human intervention, but in manual mode, a human is required to execute tests. As opposed to manual testing, in automation testing, testers use tools to write test scripts and then automate the test execution, whereas manual testing requires testers to work on everything from test creation to test execution.
• The test coverage of automated testing is higher than that of manual testing because automated testing enables the execution of more test cases
• A manual test takes a lot of time and is inefficient compared to an automated test

Automation Testing Challenges: What Are They?

Despite the fact that automated testing is much more efficient than manual testing, it comes with some challenges, such as the following:

• Since most automation tools are code-based and require coding to create, maintain, and automate tests, they have a steep learning curve.
• In order to achieve optimum software quality, automated testing should be mixed with other types of testing and analysis to set realistic goals and expectations.
• Selenium is also known for flaky tests. Test scripts tend to break when an application is changed.
• Failure to detect failures in areas where automated tests are not programmed to detect – Automatic tests do not check parts other than those programmed to check.

Getting Started with automation testing

With Selenium, you can automate cross-browser testing when testing a large application across multiple browsers. This is particularly useful in large applications that need to be tested in several browsers. Selenium Grid allows testers to automate browser-based functional tests by executing WebDriver tests in remote browsers. This allows testers to thoroughly test the application from the UI layer. Selenium WebDriver can be used remotely to test browser compatibility across a variety of devices, operating systems, and web browsers.

• Local automated browser testing

The local Selenium Grid is an easy way to satisfy your testing needs. You do not have to set up multiple virtual machines to run tests against different browser versions and operating systems. It is necessary to download and install the appropriate browser driver for the browser on which you plan to automate tests with Selenium on your local machine before you can begin automating tests with Selenium. 

• Automated browser testing using remote Selenium Grid

When you only need to test your site with a limited number of browsers, running automated browser tests locally works fine. The situation changes when you need to test your site with numerous browser combinations. Selenium Grid cannot be used in situations like these. LambdaTest is a cloud-based cross-browser testing platform that organizations should use instead of Selenium Grid. Using LambdaTest’s cloud-based platform, Selenium tests will be able to execute multiple combination tests in parallel. This will help in achieving great test coverage and parallel execution, so the product will be more reliable.

5 Rules For Successful Test Automation

In order to automate tests successfully, you should follow these 5 rules:

• Process Improvement – It is important to understand that automating a good process cannot replace it, but can amplify its results. Automating a good process can amplify its effectiveness.
• Investing in a Dedicated Team – A dedicated team can ensure quality and relieve developers of the burden.
• Automate the Things That Matter – Don’t expect to automate everything. Test automation works best in certain situations, but not in others.
• The same way you would plan, monitor, and manage any other project, automation needs to be treated as another development project. Specify what automation will do and what it will not do.
• Metrics are important when it comes to automation, as it’s how you justify the investment. Check how much time and money you can save compared to manual processes with automation.

Best practices for automation testing

Automation testing is becoming increasingly popular among testing teams worldwide. In this section of our automation testing tutorial, we will discuss the best practices for automation testing so that you can get the most out of it. The browser and visual regression tests are often run automatically by businesses.

• Identify test cases that may need to be automated. Automation cannot be automated for every test case. You must determine which requirements must be met prior to automation. Thus, it’s imperative that you sit down with your team and prioritize the tests that need to be automated. Setting a goal and identifying which tests need to be automated are the first steps. There are different types of testing.
• Check the functionality of the app as soon as it is added. It is also recommended that you organize the smaller tests into larger automation tests. Automated tests should also be organized according to the functionality and divisions within the application. In order to run tests in a particular order, you would need to create a test tree when an automation test refers to another test.
• How do you choose the best automation testing tool? The answer to this question is one everyone needs to know, whether they are beginners looking for an answer to the question, “What is automation testing?” or experts in the field of testing. You should pick a tool that simplifies your automation testing tasks and gives you the break you need, despite the fact that there are many tools available on the market.

As an example, LambdaTest’s easy onboarding process allows you to automate testing seamlessly. You can speed up release with LambdaTest, a cloud-based cross browser testing platform, by leveraging high-end test automation. In addition to Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, Puppeteer, Taiko, Appium, Espresso, XCUITest, and so on, it supports a wide range of frameworks and tools for web testing and app test automation.

• This platform allows you to run your test scripts with ease, which allows you to reduce test execution time. While tracking issues and resolving them is also possible with LambdaTest.

Final Word!

Agile and DevOps are gaining a great deal of traction as enterprises adhere to test automation due to its ability to ensure faster releases, high-quality software, and shorter time to market. However, a balanced test automation approach is essential for all critical projects if you want to achieve successful test automation.