With the world moving towards digitalization, people expect things to swirl around in the blink of an eye. There is no room for manual errors and the time to fix those errors are even less. It only makes sense to shift to automation testing, as it has proved to be a boon and not a bane for organizations. Automation and automation testing have exceptionally benefitted industries with a massive customer base, voluminous data, less time for market launch, budget constraints, and fewer human resources. Maintaining quality assurance (QA) of companies’ software assets with automation testing is essential.
Especially in banking and financial industries, where companies cannot afford to go wrong with a loyal customer base, a large amount of data and fixed deadlines, automation testing is effective, cost and time efficient. Every time the QA team identifies a bug in the code, the testers perform a routine test across the application to ensure its quality. According to the Transparency Market Research report, the global test automation market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 15.4 percent by 2025. As per Transparency Market Research’s expectation, the automation testing market will grow from 30.45 billion USD in 2016 to 109.69 billion USD in 2025. With such demand and growth, there are bound to be questions. In this article, we will address the top five common misconceptions about test automation.
What is Automation Testing?
It is a software testing technique that leverages specialized tools or automated scripts to automate the execution of test cases, making software testing more efficient. On the other hand, manual testing requires human effort in the form of sitting in front of the system and validating as well as executing each line to check for bugs. This testing methodology is beneficial because it automates repetitive operations and performs a few other testing techniques that would be difficult to achieve manually.
We can convert practically all manual testing into automation testing using tools and automated scripts. Test automation comes in the following forms:
Let us take a closer look at the various myths and misconceptions concerning test automation that users have.
5 common Test Automation misconceptions:
- You can automate all the test components: Test automation has proven to be an effective technique to reduce manual testing and tasks. That does not imply that the QA team can automate all their testing operations. We must remember that all automated testing is based on code, which is nothing but imitating manual tests. The QA team is aware of several manual parts that are not always possible to include in automated script-driven testing. Furthermore, testers are informed of which test segments to prioritize and which to test using automated testing.
- Automated testing is more expensive than manual testing: It is only partially true. The company’s initial investment in automated testing is higher. Purchasing test automation tools or developing automated test scripts, as well as hiring testers to run those tools, are the expenses. However, this is a minor outlay that saves time and money in the long run. The QA team can save a lot of money if they implement automated testing adequately. Manual testing requires more testers and more time, extending production time and increasing the cost of testers, development efforts, and consequently, late product delivery. Over time, the company can differentiate between the execution costs of automated testing and manual testing. Time is more valuable than money. Hence, automated testing is not as expensive as companies believe.
- Automating the test is easy: Every organization understands that development is challenging and time-consuming and implementing automated test tools and scripts is even more challenging. Enterprises and firms that can perform precise test automation can have a competitive advantage in the market. If an enterprise does not perform test automation well, it is more likely to lose money and time. Automation testing is not easy since the QA team must decide whether to use automation tools or design personalized scripts to make the test more productive. Many automated testing tools on the market are promoted and purchased on the assumption that internal testers will be able to use them without any training. The major attribute of such testing applications is the ability to automate the collection and replay of numerous manual test cases. When it comes to maintenance, the easy-to-construct aspect of the development is inherently brittle and challenging.
- For increased automation, you need more engineers: This is another myth and misconception that prevails in the development industry. Adding more engineers or even testers to a test automation will rarely result in a positive development effect. In fact, a team of two or three testers can easily manage multiple test projects for a corporation as automation testing does not require much manual observation or human intervention. Again, the misconception is partially true because the team can perform a large number of tests in an automated manner initially. However, as the product under test changes, which is common in the rapid development ecosystem, a considerable amount of testing maintenance is required. More engineers are hired in this area. However, companies are limited in their ability to add more resources.
- One must be a developer to write or perform automated testing: Yes, the company occasionally or once in 4 to 5 years requires a developer to write the automated test script. However, most test automation is practised using automated testing tools, which the testers can execute these test tools. Testers do not need to have hard-core programming knowledge and expertise. Just the basic knowledge of testing and programming and understanding of how to use those tools and apply them to various testing situations are all they need. The QA team must choose the finest testing tool for executing and supporting the automated tests. However, there might be situations where the testing tool available on the market does not meet the QA team’s requirements. In such scenarios, companies can hire automation scriptwriters or outsource the scripting project to third-party firms or freelancers.
Conclusion
Delivering consistent product quality is critical to a software development firm. At the same time, firms should reduce the time it takes to promote a product. Automation is a boon for the development firm in this case. The software development and quality assurance industries should avoid the myth to understand the benefits test automation renders in the software development sector.
Yethi’s 5th generation codeless test automation solution, Tenjin is an enterprise platform. The robotic capabilities of Tenjin enable to learn and adapt to the application and its updates. Tenjin, is a plug-and-play banking aware solution, continuous testing, minimizing the manual effort and speed up the test execution regardless of the complexity and number of updates.