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If an organization calls itself agile, automation becomes the critical part of the organization’s software delivery pipeline. It’s pretty obvious that on automating testing, your release cycles get smaller. So, in that case, you might as well say “why can’t we just automate everything? There is a good reason to it: automation is not cheap.

First of all, one needs the correct tools. Second, you require qualified testers for whom training is required. Third, automation infrastructure requires time and effort and on the development of tests on top of it. Development of automated tests comes under software development cycle itself. Tests are required to be designed, coded and authenticated before they can be put to use. But the largest effort comes just when you think that you are finished with the process.

Download Whitepaper: Automation Testing in an Agile Environment

Keeping up with upkeep:

Many automation projects have failed because of the stakeholder’s lack of knowledge for maintaining the automated tests. When the automation tests are not properly maintained, tests often fail and dashboards turn red. Eventually, the complete project goes irrelevant.

Choose which tests to automate

The ROI for automation tests depends on various factors. Some tests are hard to develop due to technology constraints. Like, testing frameworks might not support test cases which run across various devices or different browser sessions. Other tests might not require to be run often. Like, it might be cheaper to manually and occasionally test a use case for a feature that is used less often, rather than investing time for developing and maintaining an automated test that runs post each nightly build.

Don’t automate from first day

Every software project requires time prior its design and requirements stabilize. A very good comparison is between the UI which changes any time in lifecycle of an application and back-end services which can stay untouched for several generations.

Match the scenario of current testing

Many testers believe that they should follow the company processes, but they do not focus whether these processes are applicable to the current testing methods or not. This can lead to inappropriate software application testing.

Check for involvement of the right people

It is mandatory to get involved the right people for the test automation. The right people are like the DevTester, the developer and the QA architect.

Know the requirements

If a tester fails to recognize the exact requirements, then he or she can never perform the application test perfectly. It is important to know the requirements with good listening skill and capability to understand the customers need.

Monolithic tests should be avoided if possible

The formulas of software development are just as applicable when writing tests. As you don’t want monolithic code with various interconnected parts, you will not want monolithic tests in which every step depends on various other steps. You need to break your flows into minute, manageable and standalone test cases. That way, if a test fails, it will not stop the complete test suite, and you can efficiently enhance your test coverage at every execution of your automation suite.

Download Whitepaper: Automated Testing for Mobility

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