DEV Community: Mohammad Adil

Looking Beyond Record And Playback For Automation Testing

Mohammad Adil — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 12:33:04 +0000

With the modern technology bringing changes in almost every major industry that matters, the IT industry is bitten by the test automation bug as every task is being evaluated to see how they can be ‘automated’ in a better way to reduce the running cost, time, also the effort.

The scriptless coding approach has the ability to speed up the software development process and help testers to participate more on automation testing and maximize the reusability of the code. Scriptless automation testing solves the coding/scripting related problems that are generally faced by manual testers. Test script development demands a lot of time in automation testing which is one of the biggest challenges for QA teams. Hence it is better to opt for a scriptless framework for automation as it makes the test automation less complex.

Why Scriptless Automation Testing?

It Reduces the Time Spent on Automation
Using scriptless automation testing can help QA teams increase their automation speed for large test suites by as much as 1.5 times. As the delivery speed increases, the “go-to market” time decreases which help release major software releases. With scriptless automation testing, the automation time gets reduced by 40% which can be utilized in maximizing the test coverage and release better products.

Eliminates Coding
Scriptless automation helps the manual tester to build script with the use of actions and objects which gives an option to change the technologies anytime as per the need. A well-designed scriptless automation testing tool can hide the complexities related to the tool and language.

Offers Easy Maintenance and Reliability
One of the best benefits of using scriptless automation testing is that it allows maintaining scriptless test suites easily. Automation tests built using scripts often fail at the maintenance phase. Reusing and maintaining code is a tedious task when it comes to Script-based automation testing tools unlike scriptless automation tests built with well-designed scriptless testing tools offer easy maintenance and has self-healing features that automatically takes care of changing UI attributes.

Gives the Ability to Insert Code
Scriptless tools give access to incorporate all the possible test scenarios. A few scriptless automation testing tools that I have checked help create custom functions which allow us to make custom test steps customized as per the needs.

Ensures Repeated Testing of Product
Going scriptless open the gates for business analysts and subject matter experts to comment on automated testing environments, who stayed away from it due to complex coding. It ensures that the product is being tested repeatedly.

Saves Money
Generally, companies have to spend a lot of money on training resources on scripting skills. By going scriptless, they can easily save this money and time spent on training by automation experts. Also, the scriptless automation testing can be easily used by the manual testers which ensure high capacity utilization of their knowledge.

Does opting scriptless automation testing become a problem for skilled automation engineers? No, it doesn’t. The expertise of automation engineers can be used in white box testing, integration and unit testing and designing of the test suits.
So, we have already seen how scriptless test automation is proving its worth by making automation much faster and more usable.

Look Beyond Just Record and Playback
As we know that record and playback is an easy way to automate the manual testing processes as it requires no programming knowledge. With the record and playback, we can perform manual testing without writing long scripts as record feature can record those actions. Record and playback feature is critical for the software development cycle as it accelerates the testing process and makes it more efficient. But it is important to understand that a scriptless automation framework is not just about record and playback. Record and playback just give a working script with a hardcoded value of inputs to the user which has to be customized later. You may read this guide that explains in detail as to Why Record and Playback is not enough for test automation. With scriptless automation testing, you can auto-generate test scripts based on the user cases on the application undergoing tests which is an advanced version of the traditional record and playback feature.

How to Select the Right Scriptless Automation Tool?
Keep these things in mind while adopting a scriptless automation tool –

The test automation tool should be simple, flexible and allow everyone to participate in the test automation.
The automation testing tool should have the ability to find an alternative element locator in case a particular element goes missing. A good scriptless automation testing tool allows you to bring more than one element locator as it reduces the effort in maintaining large scripts.
In some cases, we need to create similar steps for each of the test cases, hence the scriptless automation tools should have the reusable steps feature to avoid the redundant effort required in creating the same steps for each test cases.
The tool should have the “assertion” feature which ensures that the test fails if the result doesn’t match with the expected outcome. With this feature, you can easily find whether the test is successful or not once you are done writing the code.
A good scriptless automation testing tool needs to provide easy modifications such as adding, deleting or editing an existing action in a scenario so that you don’t have to re-write the entire scenario as it affects your turnaround time and quality of software.

Before the product/software release, tests need to be run across multiple browsers. Testing different scenarios on multiple browsers is a time-taking process and it takes a toll on the script authors. A good scriptless automation testing tool should also allow test authors to reuse the tests on multiple browsers and device permutations.

There are cross browser testing tools like Sauce Labs, BrowserStack that offer dedicated testing cloud solutions. And, scriptless testing solutions like Testsigma, TOSCA , Eggplant , etc that makes the test authoring process easy while also allowing the tests to be run on numerous device combinations on the cloud. A few tools among these allow executing tests on real devices as well.

AI and ML are a few popular trends in Scriptless Automation Testing. NLP is a relatively new concept and is being applied in Testing as well. Testsigma is using NLP and allows automating tests in natural language which is quite easy to use and seemingly reliable.

So, if you are looking for a scriptless automation testing tool, check what type of application you are automating and what features you need. Today, Agile teams need more than just Traditional Testing Tools. It is important to look at alternatives to help shorten your software lifecycle and only you would know what works best for your workplace. Opt in for trial versions of both Scriptless Testing Tools and Record and Playback Tools or Selenium and understand what works best for your team!

When to Choose Test Automation Framework Over Manual Testing

Mohammad Adil — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 14:40:00 +0000

How to determine which framework is right for your organization? Should you choose Test Automation Framework over Manual Testing?

In this fast-paced world, people need convenience, innovation, safety, design and much more from their products and services. This pushes companies to develop and test software at a rapid pace in order to thrive in this competitive marketplace. To meet these demands in a quick time, firms leverage automation technology.

As we all know that manual testing is tedious, time-consuming and requires a high investment in human resources, and hence to avoid all these issues, automation testing is preferred by the organizations. So let’s explore test automation frameworks, when to use it over manual testing and how to choose the right one.

An automation framework is a comprehensive set of guidelines which provides an execution environment for automation test scripts to produce beneficial results of the automated testing activity. The guidelines may include coding standards, test libraries, test tools, common practices and assumptions of the desired outcome. But, it is important to know when an organization should choose automation framework over manual testing. When a team of developers is working on different modules of the same application, using a mix of various approaches can create confusion and hence the likelihood of errors gets increased. Hence it is important for the organizations to choose the ideal framework for their specific requirements and apply it to each module.

Some of the key benefits or objectives of using test automation frameworks include:

Reusable Tests: Efficiently designed test automation frameworks are easier to maintain and are usable.

Low-Cost Maintenance: Reusable automated tests results in low-cost maintenance.

No Manual Intervention: Ability to run automated tests without any manual intervention.

Easy and Transparent Reporting: It gives clear, unambiguous and targeted reporting and fits the requirement of different type of reporting with different information or detail level.

Here are the standard types of test automation framework which are generally used:
Depending on the need and requirement of the tester, there are certain widely used test automation frameworks with different functionalities which are preferred by the QAs including:

Linear Scripting Framework: This framework involves recording and replaying of test scripts in a linear fashion with no or little modification. This is the first generation testing method for automated software testing and has the simplest framework approach. Linear scripting framework is mainly used to test a web application’s user interface wherein the testers record their step-by-step actions and playback the record tests.

Data-driven Framework: This framework allows the tester to segregate both the test script logic and data by storing it in an external database such as XML, CSV, Excel spreadsheet, text etc. The best feature of this type of framework is that it reduces the number of scripts required to cover all the test cases and it has the ability to modify test scenarios with code based on the data used. The data-driven framework comes with a drawback that a combination of external data sources may crash software tools and complicate manual testing.

Keyword-driven Framework: In this type of framework, tables on a spreadsheet determine the action of a test script based on the assigned keywords. This framework offers the same benefits as of Data-driven framework with an added advantage that in this, the user doesn’t need to have extensive coding knowledge. The framework is also application independent, i.e. it is not dependent on the application, programming languages or automation tools. The main disadvantage of Keyword-driven framework is that the initial investment of time and money is high.

Modular Testing Framework: This type of framework divides the application under test into isolated modules that can be combined to make larger test scripts. The modular testing framework breaks down a user’s interaction with the application into smaller tests and then recombines them to achieve specific goals. It is scalable and comes with a high level of modularization which results in easier and cheaper maintenance.

Hybrid Testing Framework: This framework is the combination of more than one of the above-mentioned frameworks to leverage the strengths of each. Hence it combines benefits from all its associated frameworks and avoids weaknesses. Most of the test automation frameworks that are developed for modern software development cycles are of hybrid nature.
In order to be effective, these automation frameworks should possess some key elements such as:

Should be easy to maintain and reusable
Should be scalable to future needs
Have reliability and consistency
Have high efficiency
Should have maximum test coverage

How to determine which framework is right for your organization?
Every team and every project has its own requirements for test data management, test behaviour specification, error handling, reporting etc. Before finalizing the ideal framework for your organization, you should ask these questions to yourself:

a) Does the application have a complex flow? Have a look at the testing requirements.

b) What is the user experience like and consider the technology used in the application?

c) Determine the costs associated with each framework.

d) Can your team easily plug into one of the frameworks? Evaluate the skill set of your team within the organization.

e) What guidelines will give the desired results of the automated tests?

f)Which tools would be ideal for your organization before designing an approach that fulfills all the requirements?

g)What is the technical proficiency of the people who are going to maintain test automation?

h)What types of reporting is expected from the automation?

It is best to create a scorecard to assess several parameters including scripting, integration, reports generated, usage etc. while evaluating multiple tools. Test automation frameworks will establish the guidelines to achieve the desired goals of automated tests. But a qualified and proficient test automation professional should be involved in consideration of design and implementation of automation frameworks or selection of software tools.

In today’s modern software development methods, test automation frameworks have an important role to play. Even the small/medium enterprises are looking forward to reaping the benefits of automation frameworks to meet the demand for their products & services and are very much prepared for its need in the future.

Shifting from Manual Testing to Test Automation is not easy for a team of developers due to lack of knowledge of how and where to start. If your company wants to implement test automation and are looking for a Unified Test Automated solution, you can try Testsigma. It can help the Agile and DevOps teams to easily switch from Manual Testing to Test Automation without making the hands dirty on coding. The AI-driven cloud-based automation testing tool offers all the elements required for continuous testing.