Best Practices for Designing Effective Test Cases for Automation. A website must deliver a flawless user experience across every device, browser, and operating system to succeed in the digital market. Yet, as websites and apps get more feature-rich, manual testing becomes more time-consuming, expensive, and difficult to complete.
Although there is no doubt that manual testing will always be important, automated testing is becoming more and more popular because it makes the job simpler.
Best Practices for Designing Effective Test Cases for Automation
Automation has several advantages for teams and organizations because thorough testing is necessary for the best application performance. Allowing testers to manually test only what is necessary makes their jobs easier.
Repeated tests, such as regression and integration tests, are best left to machines because they are more prone to human error. Automated testing extends coverage, increases test accuracy by removing human mistakes, and supports environments for quick application development. As a result, time to market is shortened, the application quality is enhanced, and ROI is increased.
However, the appropriate tools, test automation frameworks, and technical expertise are needed for automation testing to be effective. It is crucial to follow many test automation best practices that will serve as the organization’s most effective productivity booster to build up these repeated, detailed, and data-intensive tests for success.
By employing the best practices, testers will be able to divide their resources between manual and automated tests while organizing and carrying out automated tests as efficiently as possible.
We will talk about some top test automation strategies in this article so that testers can use them to their maximum potential. Let’s first discuss what automation testing is and why it is crucial before moving on.
What is automation testing?
Automation testing is the practice of testing applications with specialized testing tools and frameworks to reduce human intervention and maximize quality. Automation testing is carried out with the aid of automation software, which manages the execution of tests through written test scripts. The reported results are then compared to the anticipated results to guarantee the application’s reliability and quality.
It is a test to confirm that the application performs exactly as it was intended to. It checks for errors, flaws, and any other problems that might occur throughout the application development process.
Overall, automated testing frees testers from manual testing so they may concentrate on other test goals. A QA team can modify automated test scripts to guarantee that each check is executed consistently. Also, automated testing enables a team to rapidly identify flaws in the early phases of development, which can cut down on overall project expenses and working hours.
Why is automation testing necessary?
Manual testing is no longer sufficient due to the organizations’ demands for applications to be released more quickly and with higher quality to compete in the market. Because of this, automation testing is becoming vital in the testing industry.
Automated testing assists in achieving the organization’s objective to deliver flawless applications offering a seamless user experience that sets them apart from the competition. By using automation testing methods, testers can spend more time on tasks that require higher levels of human expertise.
Each repetitive task can become boring, and boredom can cause carelessness. Repeatedly performing the same tests manually could reduce the tester’s accuracy. Yet, the accuracy stays constant with test automation.
The ability to reuse test suites makes testing and delivering results quickly. To completely test the application, testers can concentrate on providing new scenarios and test cases, which will increase test coverage. One can carry out important repetitive jobs with automation testing and those that are challenging to complete with manual testing. This kind of testing is therefore essential for CI/CD processes.
Best Practices for Designing Effective Test Cases for Automation
We will now begin the discussion and take some actions to improve the chances of success with automation.
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Choose the test scenarios you want to automate
Every test cannot be automated because some of them require human judgment to be completed. So, the first step in any plan for test automation must be to identify the tests that will benefit from automation.
The advantage of automated testing is related to the number of times a certain test may be run. When a lot of data is needed to complete the same task, it is an effective test case for automation. It is preferable to leave manual testing for tests that are run only occasionally. It is advised to automate tests with the following features to maximize the benefits of those efforts:
- Tests need a great deal of data and repetitive effort.
- Tests with a high chance of human mistakes
- Tests call for numerous data sets.
- Tests that span several builds and are either impossible to run manually or require a lot of time and effort
- Tests that need to run on several operating systems, hardware configurations, or platform configurations
- Tests that concentrate on frequently used features that introduce high-risk situations.
Test automation success involves careful planning and design. Therefore, developing an automation plan makes it possible to decide which tests should be automated first and acts as a path for subsequent testing.
The first step is to specify the objective of automated testing and choose the categories of tests that should be automated. It is crucial to choose the tasks that the automated tests will carry out after deciding on the objective and the kinds of tests to automate.
It is challenging to modify and debug large, complex automated tests. Consequently, it is preferable to separate tests into several logical, smaller tests and concentrate on a single purpose when writing tests. It permits the exchange of test code, test data, and test processes and will improve the test environment’s consistency and manageability.
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Divide the automated testing efforts based on skills.
Appointing a single tester or engineer to handle a whole automation testing task is not a good idea. The rest of the team won’t be able to contribute in any significant way if they are not kept informed at every stage. In a QA team, nobody shares the same technical knowledge.
To ensure successful automation, it is crucial to determine each team member’s level of experience and expertise and divide the automated testing tasks accordingly. For instance, if the test needs to be run using a proprietary tool, make sure that the QA engineer is familiar with the scripting language offered by the automated testing tool so that test scripts can be created with a reasonable amount of ease. Automation testing will need the help of someone with adequate coding abilities if the team decides to use an open-source solution.
Working together on the automated testing project with other QA engineers from the team is also crucial. This makes it easier for each team member to understand the procedure, communicate more clearly, and decide how to set up and carry out the appropriate tests. A team’s testing efforts are more successful at identifying flaws, and the correct automated testing tool enables one to distribute projects among many testers.
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Select the right automated testing tool.
Tools are the only thing required for automation testing. For test automation, choosing an automated testing tool is crucial. There are many automated testing solutions available; therefore, it’s critical to pick the one that best meets the requirements as a whole. The following essential considerations should be made while choosing an automated testing tool.
The operating system support should be taken into account first. If the organization chooses both platforms, it’s crucial to choose solutions that work with both Android and iOS. It’s crucial to choose solutions that work with both Android and iOS. Moreover, it must also be simple to maintain, reusable, and resistant to sudden adjustments in the software or application.
For testers of all ability levels, the tool must offer flexibility. The frameworks, languages, and tools used should be familiar to and suitable for testers. The most often used programming languages for automation testing are C#, Java, JavaScript, and Java.
The tool needs to be feature-rich and make it simple to create automated tests. Choose a tool that enables both the manual creation of automated tests and the recording and replaying of tests. The tool must also have capabilities for setting up checkpoints to validate data, databases, or crucial application functionalities.
Choose a tool that is simple to integrate with the preexisting ecosystem, such as Azure DevOps, Jenkins, or a CI/CD pipeline.
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Test early, and run frequent tests.
The testing team should begin testing as soon as feasible and regularly run as many tests as necessary to make the most of automation testing. By doing this, testers may begin discovering flaws as they emerge and fixing them right away. It goes without saying that if testers begin testing early in the development process, fixing defects will take much less time.
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Remove uncertainty
The goal of automation is to obtain consistent, reliable test results. Testers must determine what went wrong when a test fails. Yet, there is a direct correlation between the number of false positives or inconsistencies and the amount of time required for error analysis. So, in order to avoid this, unstable tests in regression packs must be removed.
Additionally, because automated tests are frequently out of date, they may not always examine the most important verifications. Usually, this happens as a result of inadequate planning before deploying automation. It’s critical to constantly be aware of whether each test is relevant. Hence, make sure that automated test validity and sanity are sufficiently evaluated across test cycles.
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Create tests that are resistant to changes in the UI.
Tests that are automated using scripts or keyword searches depend on the application being tested. The UI can alter builds when a program is still in its early stages. As a result, the test results can be impacted by these modifications, or the automated tests might stop working with upcoming applications.
For example, some automated test scripts search for an object using its locations. The scripts won’t be able to locate the object if the position changes, which will cause the test to fail.
Before running the automated test against the updated application, users might need to swap out the old names for new ones in order for it to execute correctly. By giving the controls distinct names, users may make the automated tests resistant to these UI changes. By doing this, the automated tests will be guaranteed to function without the need for test modification.
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Keep Records for Better Debugging
In order for testers to determine the causes of test failure, it is crucial to keep track of failed tests as well as text and video logs of the faulty scenario. Therefore, pick a testing tool that can save browser snapshots automatically at each test stage. Thus, it is simple to identify the stage at which the error occurs.
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Prioritise Detailed and Quality Test Reporting
Automation is used to shorten the time QA teams have to spend validating the test findings. After each cycle, a solid test summary report should be produced. Therefore, create a sufficient reporting infrastructure with the appropriate tools to produce thorough, high-quality reports for each test. Also, it is advised to categorize tests based on factors like type, tag functionality, outcomes, etc.
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Automation testing with LambdaTest
The above-discussed best practices are ways to successfully implement test automation. LambdaTest is a comprehensive solution with a number of capabilities that can assist in complying with these best practices.
Users can improve automated testing by implementing these suggested best practices and employing LambdaTest capabilities to stay well clear of common errors. This enables them to test their apps more quickly, save money, and deploy them on schedule. practices
Compared to most other automated testing tools, LambdaTest is a cloud-based platform for evaluating cross-browser compatibility. The infrastructure scaling issue is never a concern for testers with LambdaTest. They will be able to scale up or down the infrastructure, they need as necessary.
This platform provides users with the ability to test a range of applications in the cloud, which allows them to find potential bugs or flaws early in the development process that would otherwise be impossible to find.
With the help of LambdaTest, users can test their public or private websites and web applications using Selenium, Cypress, Puppeteer, or Playwright tests across 3000 real devices and a variety of desktop browsers and operating systems.
Its key capabilities include live browser testing, parallel testing, resolution display testing, automatic screenshot testing, geo-location testing across many regions, and support for multiple browsers. It can also run automated Selenium scripts on a scalable cloud grid.
LambdaTest offers a wide range of additional features to aid testers in getting their automated testing started and running rapidly.
Conclusion
Only when test automation is used in combination with specific best practices can it help speed up the development of high-quality apps and decrease time to market. However, it is crucial to recognize that, depending on the complexity of the application, each testing team and organization has a different set of specific testing requirements.
In order to best suit the application, the organizations and the users must learn these approaches and put them into practice.
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