In recent years, there were several changes in the world of technology. The same has happened in the software testing world where Test Automation has evolved to facilitate rapid software releases at the highest quality.

Contents 1. Challenges Involved with Automation in Testing 2. Scriptless Test Automation 3. Benefits of Scriptless Test Automation 4. Conclusion

Automation has always been interesting, as it reduces the mundane testing efforts and accelerates the testing process. These days, almost every organization is automating test cases. However, the ROI is not always well anticipated. Often, the tools are blamed for the negative ROI, yet the real reason associated with failed test automation are the long hours required to create the test automation suite, the need for specialized development resources, the difficulty of scripting and maintenance, the lack of test data management strategy, and a lack of involvement of the subject matter experts.

Challenges Involved with Automation in Testing

Traditional test automation techniques sometimes turn out to be ineffective in meeting the business demands of rapid application delivery and quicker time-to-market, resulting in a new set of challenges. Here are some of the main test automation challenges.

– Lack of quicker feedback: In traditional QA methods, the scripts are developed only after the application is built and stabilized. Early feedback, which is essential for the reduction of the cost of quality in Agile development, is thus rarely available.

– Substantial upfront investment: Large upfront investments are needed due to complex scripting environments and tools, also large investments are needed for test infrastructure, and hiring and training of skilled resources.

– Maintenance issues: Considering that development teams are increasingly reliant on process automation, automation components need to transform regularly and consistently in response to changes in the application under test. The subsequent expenses arising in maintaining these scripts take away the advantages that automation can bring.

– Change of focus: The prime objective of the testing team has moved from testing the functionality of the application to the technical development and execution of scripts.

Minimum stakeholder contribution: In conclusion, the key holdups in adopting traditional QA methods are the issues faced by functional and business teams in understanding automation scripts. Extra effort is required to make them available to non-technical users, leading to reduced collaboration between the functional specialists and automation teams.

Related: 6 Recommendations for Driving Business Value from Test Automation

Scriptless Test Automation

One of the solutions to maximize the scalability of test automation is scriptless test automation.  Scriptless test automation enables the testers and business users to automate test cases without worrying about the coding. It helps to achieve faster results and reduces the time expended to understand the code.

With the approach of Scriptless test automation, the complete software development process can speed up. The method allows enterprises to participate in test automation and increases the scope of code reusability. Adopting the scriptless framework, it will ease the development teams to overcome the biggest challenge of spending more time at the script development. Also, the methodology helps to simplify the test automation complexity for enterprises.

This approach for automation will not only help the enterprises to reduce the team’s time and efforts, but it will also ensure to maintain quality and ease in achieving their requirements. The major benefits of scriptless automation are outlined in detail below.

Benefits of Scriptless Test Automation

A catalyst between business analysts and technical experts:

The scriptless nature of the tests enables the participation of business users and serves as a facilitator for communication between business analysts and technical experts. It becomes easier for the business analysts and functional experts to converse and review test cases.

Reduces time to automate efficiently:

The quicker you automate, the earlier you get the desired results. Using scriptless automation, the testing team can automate large test suites rapidly. The speed of delivery, as well as the go-to-market time, improves rapidly. Besides this, it decreases the time spent on automation. This ensures early detection of bugs during the software development lifecycle.

Eradicates technical obligation:

Integrating smarter framework design upfront can eradicate the future costs that arise from augmented script maintenance effort. The technical obligation associated with scripts is therefore eliminated.

Quicker script design and development:

A simple and non-complex test design and development process, along with the instinctive user interface, empowers the quicker development of tests.

Scriptless Test Automation Approach

Scriptless automation is an eccentric testing approach that brings exceptional benefits, such as quality and cost savings, at the initiation of the development phase. This process makes automation simpler and easier, and also allows stakeholders to play an active role during the automation in testing process.

Testers are able to focus on their chief objectives, rather than developing a framework which simply enables quicker testing. Scriptless test automation is, hence, a perfect solution to shift-left which caters to the needs and requirements of Agile testing.

Best Tools for Scriptless Test Automation 

1. TestCraft

TestCraft is a test automation framework for continuous and regression testing. In addition to these, it allows monitoring the web applications. It is a revolutionary artificial intelligence (AI) that can automatically overcome any changes in the app and helps the teams with the elimination of cost and maintenance time.

Features:

-The tool automatically gets adjusted to the changes made with the AI algorithm and helps in the reduction of maintenance costs

-It is selenium-based and benefits to integrate and leverage with the modules developed by the community

2. Ranorex Studio 

Ranorex Studio is an all-in-one test automation solution for performing end-to-end testing on mobiles, desktops, and web. It is an easy to learn tool for beginners and a powerful tool for experts.

Features:

-The latest release of the tool offers support for all the latest technologies and works efficiently to keep the app fit for future needs

-The tool helps to gain control over tests during execution, helps to improve the user experience with the data-driven testing and much more.

3.ACCELQ

ACCELQ automates web testing and API without any need of writing a single line code. Also, it is the only cloud-based continuous testing platform. For IT teams of any size, ACCELQ is the best choice as it can automate many critical aspects such as planning, designing, execution, and test generation.

Features:

-The tool assures to provide end-to-end validation for API and UI

-It provides quality lifecycle management for manual and test

4. ZeuZ

ZeuZ is an on-premise, cloud-based, AI-supported test-automation platform that supports web, mobile, API, and cloud applications.

Features:

-Powerful cloud-based architecture helping to collaborate and create tests from anywhere

-There is no need to learn syntax or code

– This tool allows creating workflows across different channels

– One simple platform offering all-in-one test practices

5.Robot Framework:

This is an open-source automation framework tool, efficiently known for Acceptance Test Driven Automation, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and Acceptance Testing.

Features:

-This tool uses easy-to-use tabular test syntax utilizing the keyword-driven testing approach

Conclusion

TestingXperts’ profound knowledge and ability to perform scriptless automation has delivered significant savings in the cost and effort of test design and maintenance for our clients. TestingXperts have achieved a substantial reduction in test design and maintenance efforts that resulted in enhanced quality and provided quicker feedback from automated testing.

The post Scriptless Test Automation: Transforming Software Testing first appeared on TestingXperts.

The rapid demand for IT organizations to deliver high-quality software at a progressively faster rate has necessitated the shift to agile development and DevOps methodologies. As applications under development become more complex in nature, continuously changing to include new technologies and feature sets, manual testing simply can’t keep up. This rapid shift is driving the need for test automation. Test Automation delivers strong benefits, such as.

Contents 1. Test Automation Benefits 2. Ways to Drive Value from Automation Testing 3. Define a Clear Set of Goals 4. Don’t Automate Everything, Manual Testing Will Still Be Needed 5. There is More to Automation Than Just Functional Testing at the GUI Level 6. Test Automation Requires Regular Maintenance 7. Choose Tools Matching Your Team’s Skills 8. Define a clear test data management strategy

Test Automation Benefits

Irrespective of whether a traditional or agile development approach is applied, opting for test automation needs careful planning and an exhaustive understanding of the benefits it can deliver. Setting the right expectations for test automation can lead to creating a successful strategy whereas having unrealistic expectations can do the opposite.

Embarking on the journey of automated software testing requires the adoption of best practices such as behavior-driven development (BDD) and continuous integration and testing. These are key elements to improving the overall development process. When done well, the advantages of test automation are indisputable, but when done poorly, the disadvantages can be worse.

In this blog, we will identify the ways to drive value from Automation Testing.

Ways to Drive Value from Automation Testing

The following recommendations will increase your possibility of succeeding in adopting test automation as an integral part of your testing approach.

1. Define a Clear Set of Goals

It is essential to define a simple but clear and balanced set of goals while automating tests. Test automation has been taken as a “magic bullet” that will reduce the cost of testing dramatically and is also assumed to offer 100% coverage. However, the main purpose of automation testing is to find defects early on and diminish quality risks by not allowing them to proliferate without the need for human intervention.

Defining a clear set of test automation goals allows the whole team to experience the benefits of automation. On the other hand, if automation is considered as another form of management control, it will not be effective. Therefore, it is important to list goals and develop an execution plan which leads to incremental improvement.

2. Don’t Automate Everything, Manual Testing Will Still Be Needed

While there are numerous benefits to test automation, automating every test might not be beneficial. For example, usability and exploratory testing require human intelligence and intervention, and do not explain an investment for automation.

Therefore, teams will need to leverage both manual and automated testing to ensure software quality before launching an application. Employing a mix-blend of the manual as well as automation testing can be the best way to succeed.

3. There is More to Automation Than Just Functional Testing at the GUI Level

Almost every team starts its automation effort with GUI functional tests, however as the components of the GUI tend to change regularly, they are costly to build, slow to implement, and delicate to maintain. Hence, to ensure that problems are discovered easily and rapidly, a blend of different testing levels and types is required to reach the anticipated level of quality and to alleviate the risks associated with defects.

Teams should not just think about automating GUI functional testing, but also various other types of tests, such as:

A clear test automation strategy should feature the amount of time your teams spend in each area. The prime focus should be on the highest-value tests, allowing you to establish a clear ROI.

4. Test Automation Requires Regular Maintenance

Poor practices yield tests that are hard to understand and maintain, and may produce failures which take time to research. As the application or system is modified, you need to evaluate the efficacy and effectiveness of each test constantly. New scripts must be written to bring out new features and directions. Teams have to write and maintain these tests. This truly helps to ensure that you are not building tests that will disrupt things as easily.

5. Choose Tools Matching Your Team’s Skills

Due to a large number of automation in testing solutions available on the market, the products available from various software companies often vary in terms of their focus and practical scope. No single solution from a solution provider will meet all of your testing needs. Therefore, it is important to select the right tools that take application targets into account, fit your team’s development practices, and also match the skills of your resources.

6. Define a clear test data management strategy

In order to test business-critical software, testing teams need to plan and retrieve the essential test data, as well as the activities associated with it. Unavailability of the required data can have a severe impact on the software testing activity and can result in inadequate testing coverage. Test Data is something which constantly gets refreshed and versioned after some time, having to be repeatedly referred to to evaluate the required outcome of an activity. If test data is not managed and maintained appropriately, it can cause delays in the testing and development process. Hence, it is important to have a clear test data management strategy to accelerate the application’s go-to-market speed and to eliminate business losses.

Conclusion

It can be established that automation testing results in cost reduction, as well as time/effort savings, consistency, quicker feedback, and results, thereby contributing to increased productivity and profits. Improved test automation with accurate testing techniques helps ensure that a shippable product is delivered at the end of every sprint.

TestingXperts’ Test Automation strategy enables organizations to increase release velocity and reduce time to market. TestingXperts has developed an extensible automation framework, ‘Tx-Automate’, which is modular, reusable, integrated and compatible. The framework helps to configure/create test suites by combining various automated tests and making those test suites available for execution. Connect with our software automation testing services to know more.

The post 6 Recommendations for Driving Business Value from Test Automation first appeared on TestingXperts.

Mobile is undoubtedly the biggest medium to reach consumers and the credit for this revolution goes to the arrival of smartphones. Smartphones have brought businesses with unprecedented access to their consumer base by introducing consumer friendly mobile applications and organizations are slowly moving towards digitizing most of their user touch points.

Contents 1. Appium: Coss-platform Solution for Mobile Test Automation 2. Why Appium? 3. Things to be aware of? 4. Conclusion

There is a stiff competition between organizations to be the first one to offer new functions and features to consumers and this requires fast-paced IT efforts at their end. This is further complicated due to consumers using different devices and platforms access the mobile apps. So, in order to be deliver apps faster and to all your consumers, it is important that organizations deploy test automation solutions which can work swiftly across all platforms.

Appium: Coss-platform Solution for Mobile Test Automation

Appium is an open-source, cross-platform, mobile app automation testing using appium tool to automate testing for hybrid, native, and mobile web applications. Appium has become one of the best test automation solutions for mobile apps and games. It is an open-source test automation framework that supports iOS and Android on real devices as well as emulators and simulators. Unlike a lot of other mobile test automation tools, Appium doesn’t require the application to be re-compiled with an extra agent.

This ensures your app doesn’t change while testing and you can be more confident of the testing being done. It enables you to script your test cases in multiple languages including Java, Ruby, C#, etc. and gives you the flexibility to design your framework accordingly.

Why Appium?

• The main advantage of Appium is that the complexities are taken under the hood by the Appium server. The whole experience for the automation developer would remain the same irrespective of the platform he uses (Android or iOS).

• Appium helps in opening the doors to cross-platform mobile testing, which helps in working on multiple platforms. Also enables re-usability of automation code across iOS and Android

• It has the ability to automate hybrid, web and native mobile applications.

• Unlike other tools, Appium does not necessitate in including extra agents in your application to make it automation friendly.

• Helps you keep automation costs low since it is open source

Things to be aware of?

• Appium does not support Android mobile devices with a version lower than 4.2

• Speed of execution is slow when testing for iOS on real devices

• It may be difficult to test iOS apps on the local server as Appium only trusts OS X libraries to support iOS testing

Conclusion

TestingXperts’ advanced mobile test lab uses the modern and best in mobile testing to bring you better quality and quicker time-to-market.

With our ready Appium automation framework, Tx-Automate’ we can get you started with test automation quickly. Reach out to us, and we will be pleased to help you with the right mobile app testing strategy.

Stay tuned for more on mobile application automation tools……

The post Mobile App Automation: How Appium can add Value to your Application first appeared on TestingXperts.