With advanced technology, it’s rare to come across a company that has not automated software application testing processes. There are lots of benefits that you can get from automating your software testing. If your software application has to succeed in the target market, then you will have to provide a product that is free of bugs and with great user experiences.
Automation testing has numerous advantages over manual testing. In terms of accuracy, automated testing has higher accuracy than manual testing. This is because automated testing involves using several tools to accomplish several tasks, while manual testing entirely depends on humans. You can achieve more test coverage with automated testing than with manual testing. Automated tools can easily accomplish most of the tasks within some minutes. You can even leave the testing running overnight and check the results in the morning. AI-based test automation tools can help test the GUI before releasing the product to the customers.
Below are the best automated testing practices that are advantageous when used in the software development life cycle.
Divide testing efforts based on skills
You know your testers very well in regard to their academic qualifications and technical skills. You need to understand that no tester is at the same skill level in the QA team.
Test creation being one of the most important processes in the automation process, you have to divide the testing efforts based on the skills of the testers. Based on what you are testing and the tools you will use, assign the different groups different roles depending on their level of expertise.
Most of the test cases in automated testing require programming skills for writing scripts. If you divide testing efforts based on skills, then the productivity of the testing is likely to increase. The higher the productivity, the shorter the time it will take to release customer updates.
Start testing early and run frequent tests
With automated testing, there are great tools that you can use to detect bugs in your project in its earliest stages. This saves the effort and the number of resources that would have been invested in fixing the bugs. Ensure that the testing team runs as many test cases as possible.
The higher the number of test cases, the more you are likely to detect bugs and fix them before they spread to all other systems. When you run a lot of test cases, you will receive great reports about the process, and you can easily compare different functionalities.
It’s easier to build test cases to test a small issue than to create test cases for big issues happening to your software product. Writing and maintaining test cases for a small issue is inexpensive. The fact that you can easily run the test cases and save time allows you to concentrate on other important activities.
Select the right tool
If you search on the internet, there are thousands of automated testing tools that you can use in your project. Unfortunately, only a few of them are vital for the test cases you will run. Select a tool that is specifically designed for what you are testing.
Choosing the right tool for your testing is what makes the difference. You need to consider all the factors even beyond your project requirements. Remember that not all members of the QA team have the same skills.
You have to choose a tool that can work for all members of the team. The tool should support multiple technologies and platforms used in your organization. Take into account the operating system that you use in your organization. The right tool should be easy to maintain and easily integrated into the organization’s system.
Hire experts and target quick feedback
Sometimes, some firms with limited budgets ask manual testers to be involved in automated testing projects. You must remember that you can’t overlook the manual testing process. It’s just equally important as automated testing.
Ensure that you hire adequate staff for both testing methods. It will ensure that everything is carried out correctly without hurry or testers straining to understand the processes involved. This will enable the organization to scale up its operations.
Try as much as possible to get quick feedback. Quick feedback will help you analyze your system’s performance and functionality fast and keep everything running normally. It will also help you ensure that any code changes don’t break the existing functionality.
Automate repetitive and complex test cases
What you need to understand is that it’s not possible to automate everything. So, how do you determine which test cases to automate and the ones you shouldn’t? Choose the repetitive tasks whose results are predictable and can easily be analyzed.
Repetitive test cases that can easily be automated should be done first according to the order of their complexity. Most complex test cases often require many conditional actions with predictable results.
Automating repetitive and complex tasks reduces the amount of effort you should invest in the software development life cycle. You will improve your test case coverage and reduce the number of errors.
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