Organizations across the globe have embraced agile and devops development models to keep pace with ever-changing marketing dynamics. To keep pace with agile and devops development, test automation has gone from nice to have to must to have. Although most of the business leaders agree that test automation speeds up the testing process. However, when it comes to investing in test automation, most of the business leaders hesitate because of the uncertainty around maintaining a test automation platform.
If you’re someone who is interested in knowing how to achieve sustainable test automation, this blog is for you. Here, we’ll discuss how automated testing can deliver quality software at velocity. We’ll also discuss how automation can serve real benefits in the long run.
- Avoid Platforms With Steep Learning Curve
The test automation market is flooded with a range of paid and commercial test automation platforms. However, on a broader scale, there are only two types of test automation tools i.e. code based and zero code. Picking up code based test automation platforms is more about adding complexity and challenges in the UA process. The reason being software success is directly related to its adoption. The better the adoption the more success a software can deliver. To achieve this, you need to involve business users for testing. However, business users are not programmers and operating a code based platform can be challenging for them.
To achieve sustainable automation, you need to bring in a zero code test automation platform that can be operated without programming knowledge. As business users can actively participate in testing, they can be your goodwill ambassadors during change management.
- Look for Platforms With Builtin Self-healing Capabilities
Test script maintenance is a great problem in traditional test automation platforms that operate with the help of locators/ elements in a webpage. As most of the software platforms use dynamic elements, even a slight change in the properties of the objects will lead to test scripts failure. In a scenario, when major software vendors like Oracle, SAP, Salesforce, etc are rolling out updates on a quarterly, biannually, or triannually basis, you can easily imagine test script maintenance effort.
Opt for AI test automation platforms like Opkey that come with built in mechanisms to tackle this problem. AI-powered platforms can automatically detect the impacted test scripts and heal them autonomously without requiring human intervention. This will significantly reduce the test script maintenance burden.
- Risk based Test Automation
In case of regression testing, what to test and what not is still a million dollar question. Opt for a test automation platform that works on risk based coverage. With such a platform, QA teams don’t have to make any guesses on picking the regression testing suite.
Risk based testing platforms are the only logical way to identify the regression suites. This not only keeps business risks at bay but also saves your QA teams from over-testing.
Concluding remark
Test automation enables develops. If you want to keep pace with the development cycle, you need to invest in it. However, by selecting test automation platforms based on the above mentioned points you can easily achieve sustainable automation.
