Software development has leapt past mere creation of text in computers and into romantic matchmaking in mobile phones. Thousands of software now work on all gadgets and do more than just multiply 10-digit numbers. However, their purpose remains the same which is to simplify tasks.
Creating a software, however, is no simple task. With so many data to secure and stabilize, quality assurance (QA) teams break their heads just to make a software foolproof and ready for users to enjoy. Resources are at stake, but good news is that technology saves where technology fails.
Automation testing is the answer to efficient and thorough quality assurance check of softwares. Gone are the times when people have to labor in front of a computer for hours, even days, just to ensure a software is in its best shape. There is now technology to do the laborious task of software testing.
WHAT IS AUTOMATION TESTING?
Automation testing is an artificial intelligence (AI) process that makes work of software testers more accurate and faster by minimizing manual testing effort. Actual testing outcomes are compared to predicted outcomes to determine errors.
Automation tools execute a set of scripts to make a test. It may be ran by a suite and can also run independently for a specific test. Types of test that often requires automation are regression testing, functional testing, exception or negative testing, stress testing, performance testing, and load testing.
WHY AUTOMATION TESTING?
In these times when speed is a virtue, we need to move fast to get everything done in time while still making sure that the final product is of high quality. Automated testing is one of the smartest methods to opt for because it augments or even reduces the work of the developers by handling tasks that require big data or repetitive testing.
If you do manual checking all the time, it is not as thorough and will take longer to accomplish. Additionally, the tedious labor will exhaust your testers which may affect testing quality. Automated testing, on the other hand, can set a particular time to run and check for the results, and can do it as frequently within a shorter period of time.
AUTOMATION TOOLS
There’s still a few more things to remember before getting all hyped about the magic of automated testing. The internet boasts of several automation tools to help you get the job done, but there are considerations.
Automation tools drive the user interface (UI) and clone human actions to check the results Choosing the right tool requires determining what kind of test you want to run. Be mindful of how often your UI changes because it can affect the test results and cause errors. Consult with your software QA team regarding the right kind of tool you need.
In the meantime, here’s a list of automation tools that fits certain types of testing needs:
- Codeception – it is a testing framework in PHP powered by phpunit where you can create acceptance, functional, and unit testing. It has many capabilities that you can also do like api testing, testing with angularjs and other framework like laravel and wordpress. Here’s a simple tutorial to introduce the basics.
- Firebug – it is an extension add-on in Mozilla Firefox that is used to test the elements locator.
- Mailcatcher – it is a tool that, well, catches mail. It then checks if the application is sending the correct details.
- Saucelabs – it is a virtual machine hosted by cloud that has a continuous integration service to make it easy for developers. You can run your test in more than a hundred available platforms in saucelabs. You can also run an android test or iOS test with this one. After the test runs you can visit the logs or watch the video to check results
PROS AND CONS
The whole shebang is not entirely foolproof because there are still certain tests that are best executed manually. There are also other concerns that your software QA team might need to go over before launching an automated test.
I’ve listed here pros and cons of automation testing so you’d know if it’s the best option for your software. Take these items as points you might have to discuss with your QA team.
Pros
- Automation testing is faster and more reliable.
- You can save more time in automation checking and focus on other stuff while running the test scripts.
- Filling up the forms again and again? No problem! In automation testing your tools and scripts will do that for you.
- You can set the test to run if changes are made to the application.
- Test have a generated report that will tell or determine an error and pinpoint the cause.
Cons
- Cost of automation tools is expensive and it’s not that easy to find the tool that will suit your project necessities.
- Training of people using automation tools takes time, too.
- Checking for UI is hard for automation testing.
- Automation testing might throw an error when there are changes in the application that are not suited to the test.
Automated testing does a favor for software developers and QA teams by speeding up testing processes. A software is optimally and speedily diagnosed and cleaned before it’s finalized. Just take note of the considerations you have to mind and consult regularly with testers.
