Top 10 Test Automation Strategies and Best Practices

Testing is a critical component of the product development process since it ensures your product is as good as you hope it will be. Testing has become increasingly advanced and sophisticated over time. To ease the workload while ensuring clear and accurate results, automation testing is being used. 

Let’s take a look at the top 10 strategies and best practices for implementing test automation.

#1. Identify the tests that should be automated

Manual testing cannot be replaced by automated testing, at least not yet. Automated testing is there to make manual testing easier, so manual testers can concentrate on finding new test cases and bugs. Therefore, the first step in any test automation plan must be narrowing down which tests can be automated. Tests requiring repetitive actions with enormous amounts of data, Tests prone to human error, and Tests that must run on different hardware or OS configurations are recommended for automation.

#2. Tasks should be divided according to skills

One of the worst mistakes you can make is to ask your manual testers to begin working in test automation. In most cases, these fields don’t mesh well together because they can make things too complex for engineers to grasp. Performing test automation requires full-time resources that were adapted specifically for this purpose. You should also assign each test case or suite to an individual based on their technical expertise when creating test suites.

#3. Combining the efforts, automation & manual testing

Create your test cases in the manual form before beginning your automation process. It is best to first gather all the requirements and your testing data, and then write the steps out according to the results. Keep the objectives clearly defined. Automation can only be successful if the whole team is committed. All team members can then be aware of the process, communicate more transparently, and make informed decisions about setting up and running the right tests.

#4. Eliminate uncertainty

Automation is aimed at achieving consistent, accurate results. A tester must identify the cause of a test failure whenever it fails. In addition, with an increase in false positives and inconsistencies, analyzing errors takes longer. By removing unstable tests from regression packs, one can prevent this. Moreover, outdated automated tests may miss out on checking vital verifications. Before running any tests, make sure that you plan thoroughly. Keep track of whether each test is current at all times. Throughout test cycles, ensure that the validity and sanity of automated tests are being assessed.

#5. Use the right tool

A good place to start is selecting the right tool, and some managers believe that by finding the right tool they can implement a fully automated process. It is a fact that automation tools do not cover every scenario, although they make the process easier, skilled resources are still needed to effectively complete the task. Automation testing is entirely dependent on tools so making use of the most accurate one is the key. The most popular test automation tools are Selenium, Appium, Katalon Studio, Cucumber, HttpClient,  C# .net, HPE Unified Functional Testing (UFT), SoapUI, TestComplete, and Worksoft.

#6. Testing should be done on real devices

Regardless of what the product is, it needs to be tested on real devices. Developers and testers need to keep in mind that fragmentation is a major concern. A product must work seamlessly on many different operating systems may it be windows, ios, or android. In today’s world, many different devices are used just to access the internet globally, so every product must be optimized for different screen sizes, viewports, and configurations. Therefore, real-world testing is important.

#7. For better debugging, keep records

It is best practice to save new test requests into UiTesting Database and to reference them in the Test processor queue so that the test processor can pick them up and execute the workflow and test cases as per the test framework. The result of a test request is saved into the database table once it is processed. Having been saved into the database tables, the test response is now ready to be displayed on the UI portal. It’s important to keep records of failed tests, as well as text and video logs so that testers can determine why the tests failed. Choose a testing tool that automatically saves logs in each step of the test if possible. By doing so, you can easily identify where the error occurs during the test. 

#8. Prioritize detailed and accurate test reporting

It is beneficial to have a dashboard that allows you to view all executed/processed test responses. You will be redirected to the appropriate result page depending on the type of data. On the UI page, you can arrange the data according to your preferences. The result page usually displays test parameters and information about the test as well as infographics data.  A summary of top Test parameters and information will appear on the Results page, just below that some infographics will appear. View the test result workflow, test cases, test steps, and time taken by each step on this page. Testing results should be automated, thus reducing the time QA engineer teams spend on verifying them. Install an adequate reporting infrastructure with the right tools to generate detailed, high-quality reports for every test. Group tests based on parameters such as type, tag functionality, results, etc. 

#9. Data-driven testing is essential

When multiple data points must be analyzed simultaneously, a manual test becomes impossible. The sheer volume of data, along with the number of variables, would make it impossible for any human to carry out accurate and quick tests. Implementing data-driven automated tests simplifies the process by reducing it to a single test and a single data set, which is then used to work through an array of data parameters.

#10. Testing Early and Frequently

Get the most out of automation testing by starting early in the development process. Make sure you run tests frequently. In this way, testers can detect bugs as soon as they appear and fix them immediately. The benefit of this is that it saves many hours and dollars that would otherwise be spent on bug fixes later in development or in production.

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