5 Considerations When Adopting Automated Testing

By

Bhupesh Dahal

Columbus ATDD11/06/2014

Who am I ?&

Why am I here?

Agenda

• Background- Why test automation ?

• Define Problem

- Issues most organizations face with test automation

• Fixing the above issues, things to keep in mind if you are just starting test automation

• Review

Why Test Automation?

Dev Team’s Perspective

• Increase effectiveness, efficiency, and coverage of software testing.

• For regression testing

• Improve quality

Boss’s Perspective

• Reduce operational cost

• Increase revenue

Blessings from boss to start UI test automation

What’s the problem eh ?

• Test execution is slow

• Maintenance takes way too much time

• Tests are fragile

• Tests are not reusable

• Needs more infrastructure

• Needs more skilled resources

Test automation gone wild, boss not happy!

Framework Design

• Do basic meta-programming and start automation—don’t design the entire framework right away

• Re-factor often

• Understand the business before designing the framework

• Abstraction

• Have multiple branches

• Review test automation architecture regularly

• Have a designated Test Automation Architect

Find a balance between Unit, API Layer and GUI tests

• Prioritize Unit and API/Service test automation

• Limit the number of GUI tests, have a fixed number of stable end-to-end tests

• It’s ok to use multiple technologies

• It’s ok to use Record/Play tools like Selenium IDE for throwaway tests

• It is better to have 50 stable test cases than 500 fragile ones that breaks regularly

Reporting/Visibility

• Report results from day 1

• Integrate smoke tests with CI build

• Run entire suite daily

• Store results on a common location that everyone can access

• Email results to the entire team-automate email feature

• Use tags and map test case/requirements that have been automated

• Implement code review

Cross-Functional Team Involvement

• Request BA’s and product owners to review your automated gherkin often

• Time box and rotate maintenance tasks with developers and manual testers

• Pair up with manual testers when writing different scenarios

Treating Test Automation as a Product

• Test automation will have bugs

• Refactor often

• Work on tech debt cards regularly in smaller chunks

• Make it part of development and definition of done

Review

• Framework

• Finding balance between unit, API and GUI tests

• Reporting/visibility

• Cross-team involvement

• Treating test automation as a product

You need each of these for test automation project to succeed. Missing one would be like loosing a limb.

Stay connected

www.linkedin.com/in/bhupeshdahal/

Thank you!