Automation claims to save you time and money while improving quality, which seems unachievable. Manual testing is not overshadowed or replaced by automation; rather, it is enhanced by it. Automation, like manual labor, needs a strategy that includes effective planning, monitoring, and management. When done right, automation may be a valuable addition to a team, project, and, ultimately, a company. Many stakeholders believe that test automation is only a supplement to manual testing, thus it’s critical to realize that automation is the most effective, efficient, and comprehensive solution to improve testing effectiveness, efficiency, and coverage. It not only saves time but also increases accuracy since manual approaches to repeated activities are prone to human mistakes and time-consuming.
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Why Should You Choose Automated Testing?
There are several benefits to automation; here are a few noteworthy ones:
- Smoke tests and regression tests are examples of regular activities that may be performed using automation testing.
- It comes in handy when it comes to preparing test data.
- Aids in the execution of test scenarios with sophisticated business logic.
- It’s a good idea to run the cross-platform test cases (like different browsers, OS, etc.)
- It’s great for running test scenarios that are tough to do manually. When the number of test case execution iterations is unknown.
When Should A Test Case Be Automated?
If one of the following applies to a test scenario, it should be automated:
- If the work will be carried out again.
- It will save you time.
- The requirements, tests, or tasks are low-risk, consistent, and unlikely to change often.
- Human mistakes are possible in the exam.
- The requirements, tests, or tasks are low-risk, consistent, and unlikely to change often.
- Between each phase of the test, there is a large amount of delay.
- The test is repeated many times.
How Should I Choose The Right Test Cases For Automation Testing?
Follow the below-mentioned steps to choose the right cases for automation testing.
- Step 1:Determine the parameters that will be used to evaluate your test case as an automation candidate.
- Step 2: Dividing each application into modules is a good idea. Analyze and attempt to determine the test cases that should be automated based on the parameters for each module.
- Step 3: Combine and group the amount of test cases.
- Step 4: You may provide all of the granular level facts when you’ve recognized them, and then proceed to compute the ROI.
When calculating the ROI, the following factors should be considered.
- The tool’s purchase and license costs
- The time to work on the scripts
- The time spent to keep the scripts up to date.
- It’s time to manually and automatically examine the findings.
- Time and money spent on resource training.
- Overheads in management
Prerequisites For Test Automation
When deciding which test cases to automate, there are a few factors to consider first. This indicates that your automation efforts are paying off.
- Maintenance expenditures must be considered. When we develop a test, we’re committed to keeping that script up to date for the rest of our lives or until we delete it. As a result, you should be able to make an informed choice about whether or not to create such scripts.
- The tools connected with automation are often disregarded. Are you going to buy tools or use free source software? You must think about the tools as well as the supplementary tools that go with them. When it comes to the operating system or language updates, don’t forget about maintenance. It’s important to remember that this is yet another application to support.
- Documentation, implementation, and onboarding are all things that will eat up our time. As individuals join and depart the team, as we make modifications and start new initiatives, and so on, these activities will take up more time. As a result, while implementing automation, it’s critical to consider all of these expenses. They must be taken into account when calculating the return on investment.
- Limitations imposed by the organisation might also play a key role. This might include things like our delivery timetable, project budget, and the technical expertise of our employees. So, in order to obtain the most value out of our automation scripts, we should aim to automate depending on their frequency of usage, criticality, and legal hazards.
It’s not necessary to automate a test just because you can. If you automate a large number of tests that will need a lot of maintenance, you will be wasting time and money that you may not have.
Instead, you should concentrate on taking a risk-based strategy, automating just the most important tests. Take special care when automating your most important features, and make sure they’re done properly for long-term success.
Different Scenarios To Automate While Performing Selenium Automation Testing
- Data-driven test cases: They are appropriate for testing that requires several data sets or many data entries, such as testing that requires a login and password or filling out forms with a variety of data. Let’s have a look at some such scenarios. You wish to experiment with various roles and permissions in which you had to test roughly 20 jobs in one of my healthcare projects, each with its unique set of permissions. Consider login in each position and checking its permissions manually. Consider executing these tests as part of a smoke test, which occurs all the time. As a result, automating these tests is a great idea. In another case, we will evaluate an app that keeps track of medical instruments like CT and MR scanners. The program would monitor a number of metrics and generate an alarm if anything went wrong depending on a threshold. For instance, if your hard disk is full, you may set an alert. Consider how you’d test each parameter’s alert. It used to take two days to test all possible combinations, but now it just takes 30 minutes.
- Test case with a lot of database updates: If your test cases include a lot of database entries, they should be automated. Consider the following scenario: you only have one login credential but want to test various permissions. A high rate of test execution: Test cases that are performed in every release are good candidates for automation. The finest instances of greater execution are smoke or sanity test scenarios.
- Graph test cases: Graphs are used to present facts in a visual manner. Graph testing requires several data changes. It also covers a variety of situations, such as testing with positive and negative numbers, valid and incorrect data, and so on. Automation testing using graphical test cases not only saves time but also ensures that graphical data is accurate.
- Test cases with a higher degree of complexity: Test cases that need more preparation and setup effort should be automated. Let’s imagine you’re testing a Customer Relationship Management, CRM, program and want to use the CRM API, but first, you need to set up authentication, and then you may need to use some other APIs before you can test the CRM APIs. This might take some time, and testing many situations could take a day or more.
- Smoke/Critical tests: These tests are run on features and functions that are commonly utilized in the automated process. Critical test scenarios are included in the smoke test. You may want to ensure that your production environment is always up and running, so you automate important tests and execute them every morning.
- Tests with various combinations: To save time and minimize human mistakes, test cases with multiple combinations or setups are automated. Don’t get this mixed up with any of the other categories. Let’s consider an example: Consider an application that connects to various devices and checks the hardware and software settings that are installed on it. You’d save those predicted parameters in a database or an XML file, then connect to the device and compare your saved parameters to the device’s actual parameter values. When you have to test many devices with various combinations, it becomes difficult to test manually.
- A high rate of test execution: Test cases that are performed in every release are good candidates for automation. The finest instances of greater execution are smoke or sanity test scenarios.
- Higher manual execution time: Even when tests are short, simple, and don’t contain data variances, manual execution might take a long time. These tests may also be automated in order to save time and effort. For instance, when you are working on a project and you discover that the program under test had several interconnected/interdependent modules, which means that modifications in one module may influence functioning in other modes. So you will have to test all modules by running all module tests, which may result in 200 or more test cases and take up to 5 days. It would take a lot of time and money to run those tests in one iteration for 5 days. As a result, it is better to automate all of the interdependent tests and you will be able to complete one iteration in only one day, thereby saving four days.
The world has now shifted to automated testing procedures that are not only budget-friendly but also save a significant amount of time. For testing system applications, a variety of automated testing methodologies are available. The tester may pick acceptable strategies for their systems if they have a thorough grasp of system applications and test case methodologies. Identifying and selecting the appropriate test cases for their software products is critical to any test automation’s success.
You can leverage a cloud-based platform like LambdaTest which is a dependable, scalable, secure, and high-performing test execution cloud that enables development and testing teams to shorten release cycles. It offers Selenium automation testing across 3000+ real browsers and operating systems combinations on an online Selenium Grid.
Automated testing aids in the completion of the work and the generation of acceptable findings. However, in certain test scenarios, when performed manually rather than via automated procedures, they may provide useful findings. As a result, testers should take the initiative, consult with stakeholders, and devise a detailed approach for identifying possible automation scenarios.
