Many companies prioritize quality. If you’re in a company without formal test automation, you could start it. It will help your company produce better goods faster and sell them earlier.
Understand which step comes first and why.
Following these steps will help you introduce automation smoothly and avoid typical problems.
- Persuade management
- Find automation tool specialists
- Using the right automation tool
- Team Training
- Create a test automation framework
Persuade management
You can’t implement test automation if your management isn’t convinced of its benefits. Test automation is costly. HP QTP/UFT costs $8K per machine. An automation architect or engineer costs money (which, by the way, are expensive too). After that, test automation isn’t immediately beneficial. 2-3 months must pass until your scripts are ready, tested, and reliable enough to test the app.
You must convince management to pay for test automation and tell them to be patient before seeing results.
What will convince them? Cost-benefit analysis is required. How long does BAT (Build Acceptance Testing) of our application take? If it takes a day, test automation can do it in two. Purchase the tool, train the resource, and wait two months for results. We’ll run a BAT in two hours in two months. Each new build will save 6 hours of manual testing. If monthly builds are released. You’ll save 24 or 3 manual testing hours.
Manual testers won’t be idle. Six hours of testing will focus on new and essential app features, while automation handles regression concerns. This configuration will double the product’s quality.
Nobody can force your management to pay for product quality if they aren’t willing. When customers complain, they’ll know. Quality matters. It influences sales, clientele, and customer impression. So, smart management invests on product quality.
Convincing management to implement test automation is the first and most crucial step. If not, abandon test automation or change your organization.
Find automation tool specialists
Automation experts fall into two categories.
Automation specialists know the strengths and disadvantages of different tools. They’ll also help management choose the correct automation tool by examining the application and its technology. They’ll also design naming standards and scripting guidelines. Automation specialists help choose which test scenarios to automate initially.
If you can discover a good automation architect, you’re halfway to successful automation in your company.
Automation engineers automate manual test cases. They will create and execute scripts under an automation architect.
Some organizations recruit automation experts from outside, while others teach internal manual testers. Programming skills are essential. Object-oriented programming is essential. Most products require 1 automation architect and 2 automation engineers.
Using the right automation tool
This is another difficult automation phase. You must choose the ideal tools for your application.
When choosing tools, consider:
- Budget for the tool.
- The tool must support application technologies.
- You need qualified resources who can master this tool quickly. If you engage a QTP-only automation architect and buy MS Coded UI, the resource may not be comfortable with it. To drive good tools, you need good drivers.
- The tool must report findings to stakeholders after each execution.
Team Training
After tool selection and hiring, training comes next.
Manual testers must learn automation terminology and ideas to become automation engineers. An outside automation architect must know the product to test, the manual testing method, and what management expects.
Allow resources time to attempt multiple automation strategies. Teach them bug tracking and requirements management software.
Manual testers, developers, and automated teams need good training and communication.
Create a test automation framework
The automation architect must create a framework for long-term automated testing.
Automation framework is a set of rules and planning to develop scripts with little upkeep. Changes to the application require minimal or no script update.
Linear, modular, data-driven, keyword-driven, and hybrid are automation frameworks.