Software test automation is the trendy way of automating test cases as well as the test report which saves both time and money in the long run. But in practice, we can never achieve 100% test automation under any circumstance. Also, we cannot completely mitigate manual testing for any software application. Therefore, a mix of test automation and manual testing is one of the big challenges which project management need to decide initially. Not only this but there are other automation challenges as well which are listed in this article. These challenges could be overcome by taking some good measures as explained below.
Getting Test Automation Budget Approval from Project Management:
Before we can decide on the test automation for any software application, it is must-have a nod from the project management team, especially from the business team for the required budget approval. Obviously, test automation costs more than manual testing budget but in the long run for software application maintenance, the test automation saves both money and time and delivers much accurate test results than manual testing. Test automation is one of the best ways to do software application regression testing in the subsequent releases. As time passes, the core project team members are also replaced over the period of time, and along with them, they take away the application testing knowledge especially about the functional testing. In those scenarios, the test automation helps a lot as the test automation requires just one click to do the regression.
Therefore, before placing the budget demand for the test automation in front of the management, we should be making the management aware of the pros and cones of having the test automation. Rest, it is up to the management to decide whether they are relying on the long term vision towards the software application stability or they are happy with the short term less budget manual testing. Definitely, project management is going to embrace the software test automation over manual testing.
Choosing The Appropriate Test Automation Tool:
After making the decision on the software test automation budget, the very next thing that comes into the picture is the use of software testing tools. There are wide choices of software testing tools that are available in the market. Some of these tools require the license cost to be paid but the other tools are open source tools without any cost. Depending on the budget and the project testing requirements, we should decide what type of testing tool suits the best for the test automation for the project. Almost, every test automation tool provides the free trial version as well as free assistance to kick start the testing work.
The project team is advised to start exploring these test automation tools and decide which tool suits the best to the project. Also, it is not always the case that when you are paying money for the test automation tool and as a result you are going to get the best out of it. There are many open-source test automation tools which are present in the market and using one of this tool can deliver the accurate test result as compared to the licensed paid tool. Therefore, the choice of the tool completely depends on the type of test automation required in the project. For example, if the test automation requirement is data-driven testing, or behavior-driven testing, or UI testing, etc.
Identification of The Test Strategy:
We have the test automation budget as well as the test automation tool available to automate the software application testing. The next thing that comes into the picture is the identification of the test automation strategy. By just purchasing the software test automation tool, it won’t automate the test cases for the project all alone but we need to define the clear test strategy with the definite exit criteria and other required specifications.
In the test strategy, we should be clearly specifying the financial impacts of the potential errors, Service level agreements or SLA, the probability of the test automation failure, choice of language to write the automation test scripts, the framework to be used for the test automation, the test exit criteria, the data input, pace sat which test automation should be executed, system requirement to support the test automation tool, etc. After all of the test automation strategy is clear then the project team has a clear vision for the test automation and in this way, we can make the proper use of the test automation budget allocated as well as the test automation tool chosen.
Setting up The Accurate Expectations of Test Automation:
As discussed earlier, we cannot 100% rely on the test automation results as we cannot automate any software application testing to 100%. We always require human effort to test some of the critical test cases manually. Therefore, before we sign off on the software testing for any application, it is always advised to prepare some of the test cases which could be executed manually in order to verify that the application is working as expected and the remaining test results can be procured from the test automation report. The collaboration of both manual, as well as automation test results can together provide a clear picture of the overall software testing and the final result can be relied completely on by the project team.
Conclusion
In this article, we discussed the common automation challenges faced by the project team to introduce test automation in the scope. We also discussed, how we can overcome these challenges and deliver the best testing results for any software testing project.
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