It is not a secret that our modern world is rolling to automation.
There is a tendency to automate (if possible) actions that have been done manually all over time.
But why? What makes us starve to automation? The answer is that automation is beneficial for business growth.
But how to reap as many benefits of automation as possible?
In this article, we will talk about test automation, and reveal its benefits.
Here are our recommendations on how to drive business value from Test Automation!
1. The first and crucial point is the GOAL setting.
Nothing in this world is done without purpose.
So, all the objectives need to be clear and precise. Otherwise, the company will have a financial loss and other consequences like the inconsistency of requirements, missed deadlines, and so on. In order to set clear goals for your business, you need to first understand what you want to achieve.
Another point that needs to be strictly defined is of course the timeline.
For every step that we take we set goals with a specific completion deadline.
Note, that the more realistic deadlines you have the more successful your business processes go.
2․ Understand the capabilities and skills of the staff.
The work should correspond to the skills and knowledge of the team members. If there are no specific requirements for automation tools, you are free to choose any of a large number of tools.
But how to make the right choice? The key is to understand and estimate the capabilities of the team members who should handle test automation. There is no need to always follow the latest tools and approaches, to do experiments…
It is important to choose the tools that best match the skills and knowledge of your employees. This way you can save your time and avoid many undesired episodes for your business.
3. The third point is regular maintenance.
No matter what kind of business we are talking about, maintenance is a point with an undeniable important role.
We need regular maintenance to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of each process. We need this to ensure that everything goes as expected and nothing interrupts the workflow to go smoothly.
Without this phase, we risk having failures and harmful situations from a business perspective․
4. Leave some space for manual testing as well․
Even though test automation makes QA engineers’ life easier by decreasing the human factor, there are cases where manual testing is unavoidable.
In many cases, manual testing can’t be replaced by automation because of its specifications and nuances. So don’t try to automate the full testing process, not always it is preferable and effective for your business.
5. Define and set a clear Test Data management strategy․
To test the software, testing teams need to prepare and manage the necessary test data, as well as the activities related to it. If the essential test data is not available or well defined, it may cause a negative impact on the overall process of software testing. So you need to be sure that all the data is clearly defined and accessible to the team. The usual process to make the testing environment as close to the production environment as possible is to clone the production data and mask out any sensitive data.
6. No Sense In Automation Unless The System Is Fully Stable․
Any experienced AQA will tell you that before embarking on testing automation you should make sure that your app behaves consistently and it’s robust enough to avoid tests failing at random steps. Reproducibility is key in testing. Hence, if tests can fail due to incomplete code or some other external factors then the system is not yet ready for automation.
