Guide To Taking Your Team Towards Test Automation

The number of smartphone users worldwide is growing steadily, as are the apps downloaded daily. With the increasing dependency on apps for everything, there are no chances of this slowing down in the future. As per recent research, there are more than 6 million mobile users worldwide, which is not surprising.

To capitalize on this demand, software companies have increased the production of apps. However, they realize that users will accept only high-quality apps that are user-friendly and perfect in terms of functionality. 

In recent years, we have seen many apps rejected by users due to the discovery of flaws in them. Such incidents have resulted in organizations suffering significant financial losses and damaging their reputation beyond repair. 

Realizing the importance of delivering superior quality software to users, organizations have made testing a mandatory part of their software development process. To speed up the process, companies have started incorporating automation testing into the testing process. 

They know that automation testing can give them an edge over their competition and help them release software faster to the market. Moreover, manual testing has pitfalls, like being time-consuming and prone to human errors, which has led to this switch.

Here are the key benefits of automation testing that are driving organizations towards it:

1. Better accuracy and reliability
2. Reusability of tests
3. Greater ROI on investment
4. Faster delivery of software to market
5. Maximum test coverage
6. Parallel testing on multiple platforms
7. Highly scalable process

If you have been using manual testing and want to adopt test automation, this article is perfect for you. With so many tools and automation frameworks available in the market, knowing how to implement automation testing in your organization can be confusing. Let us discuss how you can ease your team into test automation step by step.

A step-by-step guide to implementing test automation

The steps outlined below will help you gradually introduce test automation into your software testing strategy.

1. Define project requirements

The first step is to clearly identify your project requirements so that you can decide on the kind of tool you need to consider for software testing. So, schedule a meeting with your automation experts, development engineers and all stakeholders to discuss the objectives, needs, and plans for test automation. 

Your requirements will change based on whether your project is long-term or short-term. For example, in the case of enterprise applications, there are long-run developments that can get highly complex as the application grows. So, thoroughly examine your testing process’s objectives and do a feasibility study.

2. Setting up a test team structure

In test automation, team structure plays a vital part. A proper team structure helps create a sense of accountability within your team. The team setup and accountability of its members depend on your organization’s size and working setup. 

You will need to decide things like who will be in charge of creating new test scripts and how often. You can also plan the best approach, like in-sprint automation or delayed test automation and decide who will be responsible for execution and failure repair.

3. Identifying training needs

The next step will consist of figuring out your existing team’s capabilities and seeing if they need to learn any new skills. For example, it would be a mistake to assign a high-priority, tough loss-making risk task to a new tester. 

Arrange a brief training period, where you can conduct training for your test engineers and state clearly what is expected from them. On the other hand, if you already have well-trained test engineers, you can directly move into the implementation process.

4. Risk analysis

After completing the above three steps, you will need to assess and explore the risks related to test automation. The risks can be either related to the team, the process based on your team’s skills, or the automation tool you have selected. 

The key risks related to test automation include:

• Constantly evolving technology: Technology keeps changing, and testers need to catch up and constantly innovate in terms of tools and techniques, as it can slow down your project’s progress.
• Heavy maintenance costs: Test automation can involve huge maintenance expenses. Hence, you need to consider these in advance and cover such investments.
• Fewer returns on investment: Setting up a test automation project involves a huge amount of investment. The return can be slow and take up time.

5. Lead your team

Convincing your team about the value of test automation is important. The team will encounter issues and hurdles in the first implementation steps. There will be doubts about which actions to follow, whom to involve, and what to prioritize. 

So, as a leader, it is your responsibility to simplify the process into clear outcomes which your team can follow. Such clarity will help your team to focus on the first actions to implement test automation.

6. Pick the right tools and technologies

Choosing the right tool is crucial since it will make your test automation process more effective, efficient, and accessible for your testing team to set up and maintain. As the market is cluttered with automation tools, each claiming to deliver better results, you need to select the right tool that can transform the testing process for your organization. 

Consider factors like ease of installation and maintenance, accessibility to real devices and browsers for testing, and reporting features before making the final decision.

7. Planning the execution and maintenance

Now that you are ready for test automation, it is time to document your strategy for executing and maintaining test cases.

You need to include questions like these in your document and answer them:

• What type of scenarios can be chosen for automation?
• Which scenarios can be moved to regression?
• Who will be adding newer test cases?
• Have you defined the meaning of success and failure in a test case?
• When should you move an automation test case to regression?

8. Reporting

This is an essential step in test automation since it explains the test automation results to the people involved in the testing process and other people like analysts and stakeholders. Though care should be taken to ensure the reporting is not too technical, it should not miss any important details. 

Using pictorial representations like graphs or pie charts will help stakeholders understand how the testing process progresses and what tests have failed or succeeded.   

Conclusion

By following these steps, you can smoothly incorporate automation testing into your testing strategy and gain advantages like greater accuracy, decreased expenses, better software quality, and faster delivery to the market. 

To ensure the best results, it is essential that you must choose a reliable, AI-based codeless automation testing platform like TestGrid that is cost-efficient and can streamline your testing process, enabling you to consistently deliver high-quality digital experiences to end-users. 

WithTestGrid, you get powerful features like the ability to automate test cases using simple keywords and can use its auto-heal feature to heal the code. Moreover, you do not have to rely on third-party tools since TestGrid lets you get performance testing, and conduct API testing, cross-browser testing, and other types of testing, making it a trustworthy all-in-one platform for your end-to-end testing needs.