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Automation Testing Best Practices & Strategy

Testing automation is permitted at any moment. What matters more, in my opinion, is the team support we have, together with the tools and techniques we use to create a high-quality and comprehensive automation test suite. While some teams choose to wait until their product is more established before ever considering automating tests, other teams have the knowledge necessary to begin automation testing at a very early stage of a product.

Test Automation Best Practises

It’s wise to constantly adhere to best practices while automating testing. One thing to keep in mind is that not everything can be automated, as some components of your product need human validation/acceptance, intermittent tests where the outcome is uncertain, usability testing, and even exploratory testing. Additionally, automating every test results in more expense, work, and time than is necessary.

Know the program being tested to create effective automated tests.

Prioritise the scenarios so your team can decide on the useful user flows for your product. Sort your situations into high-value and automated cost-benefit categories. To assist your team, adhere to the procedure listed below.

Choose an automation tool that meets your needs and your available resources.

Have a productive code review session. When developers evaluate automated tests, they occasionally provide helpful feedback that can be used by the engineer to improve future tests.

A tester’s job might be made more difficult by fixing unstable tests and producing unwanted noise if tools/packages are not upgraded in a timely manner.

Work with a program that has a friendly, helpful community so that you can ask questions and obtain answers, which will also enable you to scale your testing.

Make sure the code in your script can be reused and applied to additional test cases.

Prepare for unforeseen circumstances (negative testing).

Atomic flows, begin by segmenting your test code into manageable chunks and straightforward tests. Once all of them are finished, combine them into one scenario to ensure that the performance has not altered.

Reduce the frequency of occurrences. When writing a script, try to stay away from if statements to make sure the test is predictable and simple to manage.

Create standalone scripts. Running independent flows enhances the effectiveness of parallel testing. In contrast to connected suites, if an isolated test is delayed, the entire session is unaffected.

Custom data test attributes: You must include element selectors in each test you write. You should create selectors that can withstand changes if you want to spare yourself a lot of hassles.

To give automation a long life, ensure that each test uses a number of scripts and that each script is used by a number of tests.

In a word, start your test suite small and gradually expand it, making sure that each test is strong enough to run independently and in parallel.

Where to begin when creating an automation test strategy?

Typically, automated tests are added to a project to address problems like repeated manual labour, handling big data volumes, or obtaining faster feedback in a CI/CD pipeline. Therefore, you should develop a test automation approach in order to have greater ROI, test coverage, and increased test dependability. You may have all the specifics, such as which tools to use, which tests to automate, and which resources to use, within this approach.

You may deploy test automation in a repeatable manner with the help of a test automation plan. To have a thorough strategy, you need to know specific information, such as why you want to automate testing and who will be the key team working on it. When and where will the testing be conducted? What you will automate is primarily.

Some aspects that must be covered in your strategy document to account for automation include:

Potentially helpful tools and frameworks (together with the benefits and drawbacks)
a plan for updating the tools
Using the right environments for automating tests
Parallelization testing
What test data is currently accessible? Do we require more data?
Branching approach
compatibility with browsers
Test architecture to get an idea of potential designs
highest standards
Advice on how to begin the automation test
what needs automating
review of the code

Your approach might vary a little bit depending on the team or project. The appeal is that you may promote your product and provide the specifics that are most important to your team.

Personal judgement

As automation testing was not widely used at the time, I began my testing career as a manual tester. But as my career progressed, the test team eventually made the decision to fully embrace automation, and that is when my adventure into automation began. I have little experience with the coding side of things and the tools. I was aware of the advantages, but switching from being a full-time manual tester to an automated tester was challenging.

Overall, I found the experience to be fairly enjoyable because I had to learn everything from scratch, including test frameworks, tooling, scripting, and testing scenarios. I disagree that all testers must be proficient in automation. It’s crucial to understand automation tactics, how to implement them within the team, and what can and should be automated. As a guide, a tester can collaborate with a test automation engineer. Not everything can be automated, keep that in mind. Make predictions, develop your ideas, work together, or even express your thoughts on how a user interface should appear, feel, or function.

In conclusion

I did come across fresh and intriguing problems to address while working on test automation, developing methods, and understanding its approaches. I also want to thank the programmers who helped me on this new path. An effective option that keeps testing as a whole getting better is automated testing. If done correctly, it can and does save time and money. Repetitive tasks take a lot of time and risk human mistakes if carried out by a tester.

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Unit testing: What Is It?

A unit, the smallest testable component of code, is tested as part of this testing technique. A method, function, subroutine, object, or process is an example of a unit. These various components, collectively referred to as a unit, are put to the test to make sure they work as planned. Unit testing involves developers, which results in the early detection of faults and problems. It’s called “White box testing.”

Unit testing is carried out by developers using stubs, mock objects, unit testing frameworks, and drivers. Evidently, efficient unit testing increases the readability of the code and allows for code reuse, which boosts the speed of deployment.

What Makes Unit Testing the Best Option?

The four main justifications for conducting unit testing in software development are as follows:

allows for quick and simple integrations:

Upgrades to all system libraries and reworking of the application code are made possible by unit testing. Deciphering the code modifications that might not be in line with the application’s architecture will improve code maintenance. Unit testing makes sure that errors found in existing functionality are perfectly fixed. The later-integrated parts in the software development life cycle become even more accessible when each application unit has undergone extensive evaluation and testing.

dramatically lowers development costs:

Unit testing guarantees that the time, cost, and other resources used for development are dramatically reduced. Bugs are immediately found and fixed when a function’s code is written. When the unit test method is used appropriately, it reduces the amount of time and money needed to find and fix defects.

Effective documentation is provided:

The unit test approach efficiently documents product results and the implementation process. Let’s say the team members are interested in finding out which module offers certain capabilities. In that scenario, the team members can consult the relevant documentation to comprehend the logic of the module and the system. Unit test cases that contain information about the proper or improper use of a software component serve as indicators. As a result, the unit test cases perfectly describe these indicators.

Improved code coverage:

While some engineers insist that the code coverage policy must cover every last bit of the code, others disagree. The organization and the project stakeholders will determine how this scenario plays out. Numerous tools assist unit tests in calculating the overall percentage of the project, function, or individual modules that are covered. When writing code, it’s critical to understand if a given line will be executed. Developers can determine whether a code line is required using metrics for unit testing coverage.

Integration Testing: What Is It?

After unit testing, it is the second testing phase in the Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC) process. It is a testing technique where individual application parts or units are tested collectively. The performance of the application behavior after integration is then confirmed. Through the interaction of units or integrated components, this testing technique assures that flaws are exposed.

What Is The Integration Testing Process?

Decide on the module:

Based on the strategy, the appropriate component or module needs to be chosen and tested.

Carry out unit testing:

All the functionalities of the chosen component or module are subjected to unit testing.

Install the module:

To start the integration testing, the modules or components of choice are deployed to the necessary initial repairs.

Conduct functional testing:

Each and every evaluated use case for the selected components

Test structural integrity:

Through the use of structural testing, the selected components are evaluated.

Examine the outcomes:

Once the product, application, or system has been extensively tested, the results of the testing indicated above are recorded and the process is repeated.

Integration Testing Methods?

Tests of top-down integration

According to the control flow of the software system, it is a testing approach where integration testing is carried out from top to bottom. Prior to integrating and testing lower-level modules to verify software functionality, higher-level modules are tested first.

Tests for bottom-up integration

This testing strategy involves testing lower-level modules first, which allows for easier testing of higher-level modules later on. The top-level modules are tested one after the other until they are completely tested.

Tests for hybrid or sandwich integration:

The top-level and lower-level modules are tested simultaneously using this testing approach. Both the top-down integration testing and bottom-up integration testing features are combined in this method.

Testing the Big Bang

In this testing style, all components are merged at once. After integration, the system is tested to see if everything is operating as it should. Knowing which module caused the problem gets difficult if a defect in the fully integrated module is discovered. Even if the error is found, it would be expensive to remedy because it was discovered much later.

When should unit testing be preferred over integration testing?

unit tests

The cycle of developing an application should include doing it. The unit test and the code should ideally be written simultaneously. Before writing production code, unit test the method. When a unit test fails, testers are able to pinpoint exactly which line of code is malfunctioning. Testers who receive this kind of feedback are better able to detect issues in the code and submit them to the development team, who can correct them right away rather than having to go back and troubleshoot them later.

Integrity Checks

Typically, it takes place at the beginning of the software development cycle. Continuous testing of every daily build is made possible with Selenium testing. The performance, dependability, and functionality of the units should be ensured by running the integration tests as necessary.

Result of failing to run unit and integration tests

Every strategy plan for providing seamless apps must incorporate the basic testing procedures and allocate funds to support bug-free operation. Every test strategy has a key area to cover, and any omission could reduce the application’s overall quality.

Without unit testing, it’s likely that the majority of defects won’t be found until later in the development process. In these situations, QA engineers will search for the bugs and open tickets, which will then be fixed by the Dev team, who will then close the tickets. As a result, a great deal of valuable time and effort is spent fixing defects that could have been found and resolved sooner to stop code redeployment.

Similarly, integration testing is required to guarantee that internal application modules and third-party apps function properly when used together in testing. Without integration testing, the application won’t go through important user-based scenarios and won’t be able to identify its integration bottlenecks.

Conclusion

Bottom line Performing both unit and integration tests do not successfully result in the development of a seamless software program. Comparing unit testing to integration testing, you can see that each of them can find coding flaws that the other overlooked. It can also give developers the security net they need to proceed with other automated tests that gauge various levels of your application’s functioning and make sure there are no problems with the infrastructure on the back end.

Unit testing is a fundamental aspect of automation software testing courses, whether taken in person or online. It is a crucial component of the automation testing curriculum, focusing on evaluating individual units or components of a software application in isolation.