How does it feel when you see your app is satisfying so many users’ requirements? Feels incredible, doesn't it? User satisfaction is the goal that you worked for after you had figured out the technical solution for the problem people were facing.
On the other hand, if your app doesn’t function properly and crashes every now & then, how will you feel? And, what will become the reputation of your app? That is indeed a nightmare that no tech business wants to experience.
Now, the harsh truth is that such downfalls in tech businesses can be easily caused by a small ignorance of the team. Yes, ignoring the importance of software testing can make your app crash which can eventually lead to a bad impression about your business.
Though you know that software testing may not be insanely difficult if you follow proper strategies and use efficient testing tools. But, as we always mention in our articles, the demand for new applications as well as their new features is insanely surging nowadays, and that demand can never be managed with traditional software testing techniques.
Here come the test automation practices as the savior. In the modern agile methodologies, using advanced automated software testing tools is the best way to manage the requirement of testing numerous applications in less time and enabling the entire product team to take an active part in the testing process regardless of whether they have coding knowledge or not.
However, you may sometimes face some challenges in executing test automation strategies, and in this article, we are going to check out those challenges.
The basis of proceeding with test automation can be simply described as managing the immense demand for the products and their features among users. However, for better understanding, let’s take a look at the points stating the importance of test automation.
So, you can clearly see that automating your tests is a highly important practice and you must move strategically to get the best results. Now, let’s discuss the challenges that you may face while automating your tests.
Achieving maximum efficiency in continuously testing software applications is one of the largest dreams of tech companies. Here we have jotted down the difficulties or challenges that they face while moving toward that dream.
As the huge demand for software applications becomes an issue of managing, the availability of countless test automation tools also becomes a challenge for any tech company to select the best-suited one for them.
Nowadays, there are so many test automation tools available in the market that you can easily find one or more tools being the best in every required feature. However, every application comes with its own requirements for testing and the selection of the test automation tool should also be based on them. So, let’s check out those deciding factors.
Focusing on the effective fulfillment of the above-mentioned points can surely help you select the best-suited test automation tool according to your needs.
No matter how much advanced technology you use, in the end, the main tasks will be performed by your team, and for that, there must be seamless communication & collaboration available among them. If there is no effective communication among your team members, it is highly likely that dilemmas will arise at several points of the entire product development process, and it will result in immense wastage of time, resources, and effort with no good result.
Hence, you must make sure to take the necessary steps so that such situations do not arise. The most effective way of preventing such confusion and dilemmas among your team, you must appoint expert project managers, business analysts, product managers, and more responsible people so that they maintain a healthy bridge among the entire team and focus on building a seamless integration & collaboration among them.
However, the selection of the tools to be used in the business is also very important here. Efficient tools like Preflight allow your entire team to easily collaborate with each other for an overall great testing process.
As we previously mentioned, regardless of how advanced tools a business uses, the final result of every action depends on the efficient decisions made by respective team members. Now, the expertise of team members is not something that you can completely control, and hiring experts also comes with huge expenditures. But, there is an easy and truly effective way to deal with this issue.
Using an advanced test automation tool like Preflight can efficiently solve the problem of lack of expertise among your team members. It is such a powerful tool that it enables anyone to perform every test-related operation irrespective of his/her coding knowledge. In simple terms, no matter if someone knows how to code or not, he/she can easily use Preflight to solve all kinds of software testing needs. You can get to know about all its benefits from the article “10 Amazing Software Testing Benefits From PreFlight In 2022”.
Till now, you only got the idea about the importance of high-performance tools and expert team members in the test automation process. But, you must know that despite arranging the best for those two aspects, a lack of an efficient test automation strategy can lead your test automation process toward failure. So, how can you take care of that too?
Well, an efficient test automation strategy takes a lot of things into consideration. To ensure that you get the best one, you must focus on the following points.
So, an ideal test automation strategy must ensure the best levels of the following.
Traditionally, the widely used test automation strategy is called the testing pyramid, and you can know everything about it here.
This may be a practice that is often the most ignored one. People often think that automating the tests can do magic and they will get software applications that are completely bug-free. But, you must know that such expectations are absolutely unrealistic.
You must remember that no matter how much effort you put into automating your tests, not only test automation but the whole software testing process is also never complete. Hence, the realistic goal of test automation should always be to achieve the maximum possible efficiency through feasible ways.
Also, focusing on test automation never means that manual testing can be avoided. There are various aspects of software testing that can better be done manually, and multiple forms of tests can be used there.
Hence, the best practice is to follow the fact that test automation should be used wherever necessary, which can even be the intermediate stages of the entire software development process. So, keep realistic expectations, maintain efficient communication with the management, and keep proper documentation to achieve the best possible results through automating the tests.
You might already be familiar with the high costs involved in automated regression testing but, you must also know that test automation in general can be insanely expensive. Besides spending a lot of money on analyzing, designing, and building the test automation framework or reusable functions & libraries, licensing costs can also often be high. The best way to deal with those high costs is by using efficient open-source test automation tools.
While using open-source test automation tools can save you from various expenses, there still remain some more high costs like collaborating and meeting expenses. But, if you consider the amount of financial savings in the long run for automating your tests, the initial investments in them are surely justified. Hence, while making decisions about the budget with the management, make sure to take those returns on investment into consideration, and decide accordingly.
Too much reliance on data causes problems in data management. In simple terms, the execution of a test script needs the data to be in a specific state, otherwise, serious issues can occur in several scenarios. So, you can imagine without proper data management, how insane it can become to simultaneously execute the test script in several test environments and configurations.
There are other points of concern regarding the reliance on data. Some of the prime ones are -
Probably the most effective way to get rid of these data management issues is to develop self-contained and independent test scripts. For that, you must write the test scripts in a way that they create and clean all the data needed for their successful execution. However, you must make sure that the possibilities of test failure due to data-related concerns are taken care of.
No matter how much you brainstorm about perfectly testing your product, the end goal is to improve the quality of your product for serving the best to your users, not to just stay indulged in the testing process.
This concept is highly important for non-automated tests too. That means even for the tests that you need to perform manually, you need to clearly focus on the goal that you have to properly perform tests so that you can ensure the best quality of your product. As a result, the tests will provide useful data that will help your team in developing better features for the product.
A good way to achieve this is by discussing everything with your entire team, and management, and taking user surveys into consideration. When all the responsible people will agree on anything, then the outcome can be stated as full-proof.
This article tells you why test automation is so important and what challenges you may face while implementing it. Here we have also jotted down effective ways to overcome those challenges and achieve maximum efficiency in test automation. So, consider going through the article carefully and acknowledge yourself with every necessary information about this crucial approach in your application development process.
Also, you may already have figured out that without using efficient test automation tools, you cannot be exempted from its hassle. And, we must mention that Preflight is one of the most advanced AI-based test automation tools that you can get in the market. This simple browser extension can easily enable anyone to automate complex tests without involving him/her in coding. Get started with us to know the process in detail.
For more information, you can always visit our website or reach out to us. And, if you like to read informative tech articles, do visit our blog page.