DEV Community

WeTest
WeTest

Posted on

Top Four Challenges in Test Automation

Automation testing is a testing technique to test and compare the actual outcome with the expected outcome. It is an essential subset of software testing. However, there are many challenges in applying test automation for applications under test. Here are some of the most common challenges you should consider to mitigate the risks of test automation failures.

Challenge 1: High upfront investment cost
Automation increases testing velocity but the cost can be a major concern. The initial phase of implementing automation is always expensive. It is important to analyze, design, and build the test automation framework, reusable functions, libraries, etc. Certain cases may involve licensing costs except for the usual operational costs. One must also take into account the cost incurred in training the resources and setting up the grid.

Challenge 2: Finding the right tool
Finding the right automation tool is a very crucial challenge. There are many tools available now, the choice of tool depends on the kind of application and the extent of automation testing. Before selecting a particular tool, the test engineer should evaluate the pros and cons of each tool and consider based on the basis of the some points such as scalability and maintainability.

Challenge 3: Ensuring Adequate Test Automation Coverage
Another major challenge in automation testing is a lack of infrastructure to enable proper test coverage and execution speed. When testing applications against multiple browsers and operating system combinations, test scripts must run in parallel to run each test against the configuration in a reasonable amount of time. The infrastructure must support the parallelization strategy.

Challenge 4: Effective Communicating and Collaborating in Team
Automation testing is more complicated than manual testing because it requires more communication and collaboration .The team need to spend efforts on communication and provide huge evidence, historical data, and even do a proof of concept. Ineffective communication and collaboration can quickly turn test automation experiences into nightmares.

Summary

These challenges are not the only ones found in test automation, yet they are common. If we don't have solutions to overcome them, it can easily result in failure. So we will also provide detailed solutions in the following articles, please stay tuned!
Experience WeTest automation in action by signing up for a free trial today, Click Here.

Top comments (0)