Automation Testing Guide: How and Why to Automate Manual Testing

The software industry regularly witnesses the emergence of new trends, technologies, and approaches. And while not all of them are here to stay, some are not going anywhere. Automation testing definitely belongs to the latter group: having been known since the 1907s, automation in testing has only gotten more common and more powerful.

But is automation needed on every software testing project? How to plan and set up an automation project to benefit from it the most? And why can automation projects fail? These are just some of the questions we’ll answer in today’s longread.

Key Takeaways

• Automation testing in software testing is the practice of using code and specialized tools to make the tests run automatically based on a certain schedule.
• Essential components of automated QA include a test strategy, test plan, testing framework, and testing tools. There are testing tools that create tests, schedule them, run them, collect results, arrange them into reports, and help analyze those reports and suggest areas of improvement.
• The most popular types of testing to automate include functional testing, GUI testing, regression testing, performance testing, security testing, API testing, and integration testing.
• Deciding whether your testing project needs automation comes down to several factors: whether there are many repetitive or particularly time-consuming tests, whether you frequently need to run parallel tests on multiple devices, whether the project involves intensive performance or security testing, and whether your projections show that automation is able to save you money in the long run.
• Automated testing has many sizable benefits, including the ability to speed up the releases, drive down the cost of testing, increase test coverage and accuracy of testing, improve platform compatibility, ensure comprehensive reporting and test reusability, and achieve higher productivity and cross-team collaboration.
• At the same time, automation testing is not a universal answer to all testing-related problems because it has some drawbacks too: it’s initially time-consuming and requires a significant upfront investment, requires continuous code maintenance, and mostly produces “black and white” results, meaning testers get a narrower perspective on the state of the software.
• Achieving 100% automation on a testing project is technically possible as long as the project meets certain requirements, but it’s not a financially feasible decision because 100% automation coverage rarely leads to a spike in quality that the stakeholders are hoping for.
• Many testing activities can be successfully automated, including functional, regression, and cross-platform testing. Some of the activities best left for manual testers include exploratory testing, usability testing, penetration testing, and complex end-to-end functional testing.
• Despite everyone’s best effort, test automation projects can sometimes fail. The most common reasons for that include the lack of communication between departments, wrong choice of tools and frameworks, foregoing manual testing completely, and giving in to the desire to automate everything.

What Is Automation Testing?

Let’s start with the basics: what automation actually is and what its place in the modern software quality assurance landscape is. Automation testing is a software testing technique that allows organizations to automate a large chunk of tests that are traditionally done manually but require a lot of time and can be challenging for the tester because of their repetitive nature.

Automation testing is carried out with the help of an automation framework, test scripts, and tools that can execute tests according to a specific schedule, record the results, notify the team when a certain condition is triggered, and offer detailed feedback that helps improve the process and the outcomes of the test execution process.

While automated QA is by no means a new trend, it is steadily going up in terms of adoption among organizations of all sizes. One study estimates that most companies automate only up to 49% of their tests, but an increasing number of companies (32.2%) would like to be able to automate up to 75% of tests. The job market is also witnessing an increased need for experienced automation QA engineers, which means the industry is currently on the rise and we will continue to see the growing importance of automation testing in the quality assurance process.

Automation Testing vs. Test Automation

Many sources use the terms “automation testing” and “test automation” interchangeably. But do they really mean the same thing, or do they have different meanings and different uses? Let’s take a closer look at both concepts to find out once and for all.

Automation testing is the process of setting up software tests to run independently over a certain period of time, as opposed to manual testing, where the tester needs to execute each test when needed.

Test automation is the process of automating all software testing-related tasks across the organization, which typically go way beyond automation testing.

Therefore, test automation is a much broader term. Test automation is an integral part of the continuous testing approach, which helps teams test software faster and with more precision, which results in better-quality software and faster release cycles. Test automation usually includes automation testing, but the two terms are definitely not synonyms, although using both gives an organization more opportunities for improving its software development process.

Popular Types of Automated Testing

According to seasoned automation professionals, it is not only impossible but also impractical to automate everything. Automation is a valuable investment that should be only applied to where it’s needed the most. But where does automated testing make the most sense? These are the most common and in-demand ways to use automation testing:

• Functional testing. This type of testing is pretty self-explanatory: automated functional testing aims to make sure that all functional elements of the application are working as intended and that the application fulfills its business goals.
• Regression testing. Regression testing, which is performed to check the state of the application after any update to the source code, is one of the most common testing types to be automated because it’s also perhaps the most repetitive and monotonous type of testing.
• Performance testing. Users have come to expect spotless performance from a software product even in challenging environments, and that’s exactly what performance testing deals with — it tests the operation, speed, and responsiveness of the app by simulating various real-life conditions.
• Security testing. An automated test suite for testing applications that deal with user data must always include security testing. Automating this type of testing helps increase the coverage, take into account even the most unlikely scenarios, and achieve stronger outcomes.
• API testing. With more and more software products relying on APIs to enhance their functionality and offer more useful features to their users, API testing automation becomes a vital tool for checking the operation of APIs on their own and as part of a larger solution.
• UI testing. UI testing has a lot in common with functional testing, as both deal with the business side of the application and how the end user interacts with the product. However, user interface testing pays more attention to the individual UI elements and can be successfully automated.
• Unit and integration testing. Unit testing and integration testing are not simply types of testing, but actually testing levels. Automated unit testing checks each unit of the application separately, and integration testing exists to test them as a comprehensive software solution.

Does Your Organization Need Automation Testing?

For several years, QA automation has been lauded as a universal solution for all quality assurance-related challenges, which made it easy to think that automation can be used on every project regardless of the scale, purposes, type of application, or specific challenges faced by the product owners. Of course, that is rarely the case, and not every development cycle will benefit from automation. Here is when your testing solution definitely needs automation:

• Some manual tests are impossible or difficult to run manually, while skipping them will result in skewered results of testing or an incomplete testing project;
• The test suite contains many repetitive tests, such as regression testing, which not only take too much time, but also lower the job satisfaction of manual QAs who are stuck doing monotonous tasks;
• There are high-risk cases that often fail, and recreating them manually every time takes too much time from the team;
• You frequently need to do intense performance or security testing, testing different conditions and scenarios that can be hard to include completely with manual testing;
• You need to run parallel testing on multiple devices at the same time — for example, when testing the compatibility of the solution across different devices or platforms;
• You are sure the quality of the software will improve dramatically — starting an automation project usually requires a lot of time from the team members and stakeholders, so it should make sense quality-wise;
• You’ve made the calculations and found that automation will save you money in the long run — the initial setup requires significant financial investment, so expensive automation may not make sense for small projects or projects on a tight budget.

Benefits of Automation Testing

Adopting automated testing is a huge endeavor for an organization that is usually associated with high costs, extended preparation time, and the need to hire additional personnel or outsource the project partially or in full to an offshore vendor. Still, more and more companies choose to automate their testing — this can be confirmed by the growing market size of automation or by the increased hiring needs of software companies. So, why do organizations want to automate testing in the first place? These are the biggest benefits of automation.

1. Faster Release Cycle

In a time when there are multiple competitors in every field, companies are often racing against the clock to release new or updated software products faster and win their share of the market or improve customer loyalty. And many report testing as the biggest bottleneck preventing them from achieving a quicker release cycle. This is where automation comes into play: by running tests around the clock and with little to no human input, companies can get a better idea of their product’s quality faster.

2. Saves Money in the Long Run

Let’s not sugarcoat it: setting up an automation testing project from scratch costs money: the money you pay for advanced testing tools, the money needed to hire new specialists, and so on. However, by reducing your dependency on manual testing, automation can help you scale down your manual QA department, saving money in the long run. The opportunity to speed up the release cycle and increase your revenue by serving your customers better is also a big financial advantage of automation.

3. Better Test Coverage and Accuracy

By saving time spent on testing each individual aspect of the application manually, automation allows teams to dramatically expand testing coverage. With a well-tuned automation testing process, the entire application can be repeatedly tested in a matter of minutes — or hours, in case of a particularly large application. And, by removing the probability of a human error from the equation, automation improves the accuracy of the whole testing process.

4. All-Around Platform Compatibility

With over 4.6 billion smartphone users in the world and hundreds of smartphone makes and models, ensuring compatibility on all mobile devices is a challenge on its own, not to mention that there is also a vast range of desktop computers, laptops, tablets, wearables, and smart TVs that all deal with software. Device and browser automation is one of the areas where the automated testing approach shines, allowing development and testing teams to get a complete picture of the product’s performance on different hardware and software combinations.

5. Improved Team Productivity

Manual testers often have to deal with repetitive, monotonous tasks. You cannot do without them in manual QA, but if you ask a manual tester whether they enjoy those repetitive tasks, they will probably say that they don’t. Automation, on the other hand, can take over these monotonous, time-consuming tasks, such as regression testing. As a result, the team will get time to spend on more interesting tasks or training to become better at testing. This, in turn, will drastically improve the team morale.

6. Higher Test Reusability

With manual testing, each test you create can only be used until the software solution itself undergoes a change. This creates many additional tedious tasks for the team and slows down the quality assurance process. Automation testing can use the same scripts over and over even if there are code changes in the solution that is being tested. Test reusability saves a lot of valuable time for the testing and development teams, allowing them to focus on other pertinent tasks.

7. Comprehensive Reporting

Automated testing produces a lot of valuable test data that is automatically generated and exported into detailed test reports. This allows teams to review the results of every testing endeavor down to the smallest detail, as well as go back to earlier reports and see how they compare to new ones. Manual testing can also produce reports, but they are simply not at the same level as automation testing reports and hardly ever prove valuable for future testing.

8. Higher Resting ROI

The question of ROI in testing automation has always been a polarizing one. Some say that automating testing from the ground up takes too many resources, while others believe that automation always pays off in the end. There are various formulas for calculating the ROI of automated testing and different approaches to understanding the importance of ROI. However, if we refer to one of the key principles of testing — Boehm’s law — we’ll see that the cost of fixing the bug grows with time. And since automation helps discover bugs earlier in the development cycle, the cost of spotting and fixing a bug becomes lower.

Limitations and Drawbacks of Automated Testing

Testing automation is often viewed as a universal solution for many QA-related problems, from minimizing testing time to increasing the efficiency of testing. However, automation is not without its drawbacks, and they should be considered along with the benefits when you’re still deciding whether your software project needs automation. These are the key disadvantages and limitations of automation testing.

1. Automation Takes Time and Money

One of the most common concerns stakeholders have about automation is that it requires more time and money than many presume. For many small projects or startups that operate on a limited budget, automation can become an investment that doesn’t pay off. This is why it’s important to evaluate the company’s resources before the start of the project, so that the project budget doesn’t break the bank.

2. Test Case Constraints

Automation testing is only as effective and all-encompassing as the test suite it’s based on. Failure to create a comprehensive test suite will result in automation delivering incomplete results and giving the stakeholders a fake sense of security. And turning every valuable issue into a test case again takes time — which, especially at the beginning of the project, not every organization can afford.

3. Narrow Perspective

As much as testing automation can do, it still cannot cover every single aspect of software quality assurance. Specifically, automated testing won’t prove very useful when it comes to testing at the early stages of the software development project when the core functionality is still being developed, as well as many areas of GUI testing and software aspects that require subjective validation. Automation is also not suited for exploratory testing, which is an essential component of software quality assurance.

4. Continuous Code Maintenance

Even with the most seasoned automation QA engineers and the best-developed automated test cases, automation is not a one-and-done endeavor. Software evolves on a regular basis, which means that test cases should also be reviewed and updated every time a code change takes place. This means that automation testing requires time and effort even outside of the immediate testing process.

5. “Black and White” Results

With rare exceptions, an automated test can pass or fail. This gives the QA engineer an idea of what the application behaves like in specific conditions and with a specific input. However, an experienced QA can extract much more information from a test than just the “failed” or “passed” parameter. From an unusually long processing time to other unexpected behavior displayed by the app under normal conditions, there are some things that only the human eye will catch.

Can You Automate 100% of the Testing Process and Eliminate Manual Testing?

With so many benefits and few drawbacks, automation is often paraded as a technique that has unlimited uses in the software quality assurance process. Automation QAs and other project stakeholders often begin feeling the pressure of automating as much as possible and eliminating the company’s dependency on manual testing. So, is it possible to achieve 100% automation and get rid of manual testing completely?

If we understand 100% automation as 100% of test cases being automated, then it can be possible to achieve 100% automation, provided that all manual test cases are suitable for being automated. However, aiming for complete automation is never advisable. There are still areas in a software application where the human eye is absolutely critical. These include not only the traditional aspects of QA where manual testing is widely used, such as exploratory and UX testing, but also things like security, penetration, and load testing, which often provide false positives or negatives when being automated and require manual testing to complete the job.

For the absolute majority of software development projects, a proper balance between manual and automation testing is the way to go. The exact ratio of manual to automated testing is never a constant value — it’s something an experienced QA Lead can figure out to achieve the highest possible automation ROI while bringing a positive change to the application’s quality.

Where to Use Automation in Testing and What to Do Manually

Clearly, automation software testing is a powerful tool in quality assurance, allowing companies to dramatically increase the coverage, speed, and efficiency of testing. At the same time, no one would go as far as to claim that software testing automation is the universal answer to all kinds of quality-related issues.

There are many things in QA that are best left to manual testers, even though the positive outcomes of automating software testing are not to be argued with. Here are the key instances where test automation in software testing proves to be an invaluable addition to the process, and instances where manual testing is still the best option.

Testing Activities to Automate

1. Regression testing. This involves re-running previously executed tests to ensure that recent changes or additions to the code have not negatively affected existing functionalities. Here, software testing automation saves time and resources, making it easy to quickly validate software updates.

2. Smoke testing. These are preliminary tests conducted to check the basic functionality of an application. Automating smoke tests allows teams to quickly verify whether the build is stable enough for further testing, saving valuable time and resources.

3. End-to-end functional testing. Automating stable processes helps ensure that various components of the application work together as expected. While it’s effective for stable features, it’s important to consider the dynamic nature of some interactions.

4. Performance and load testing. Using automation testing in software testing of the app’s performance ensures that the product can handle expected load levels and stress conditions consistently. Automated tools can simulate multiple users to validate performance under varying conditions, which is essential for scalability.

5. Cross-browser testing. This activity involves checking the application across different web browsers and devices to ensure compatibility and consistent user experience. Automation significantly reduces the time required to perform these repetitive tests across multiple platforms.

6. API testing. Automating API tests allows for rapid validation of endpoints, ensuring that they function correctly and return expected responses. This type of testing can be performed frequently to verify that APIs remain stable and reliable after code changes.

7. Accessibility testing. Initial accessibility checks can be automated using specialized tools to identify compliance with standards like WCAG (Web Accessibility in Action). However, while automation helps catch many issues, manual reviews provide a more comprehensive evaluation of user experience for diverse user needs.

Testing Activities to Keep Manual

1. Exploratory testing. This approach involves testers actively exploring the application to identify issues and gather insights without predefined test cases. Human creativity is vital here, as testers use their intuition and experience to uncover unexpected bugs.

2. Usability testing. Manual usability tests assess how real users interact with the application, focusing on user satisfaction and experience. This type of testing provides qualitative insights that automated tests cannot capture, particularly regarding test design effectiveness.

3. User acceptance testing (UAT). UAT involves stakeholders and end-users validating the application against their requirements and expectations. This critical phase is best conducted manually, as it requires feedback from actual users to ensure the software meets their needs.

4. Security testing. While certain security checks can be automated, manual penetration testing is essential for identifying complex vulnerabilities that require human expertise. Security experts can evaluate potential threats and weaknesses that even advanced automated tools may overlook.

5. Complex end-to-end functional testing. This includes scenarios that involve intricate UI interactions and multiple user paths, often affected by frequent changes. Manual testing allows for adaptive responses to unexpected behavior that automation might not account for.
   
6. Accessibility testing. While tools can automate some accessibility checks, manual evaluation is critical for understanding the actual user experience of individuals with disabilities. Manual testing can identify subtle issues that automated tools might miss, ensuring a more inclusive application.

Can a Low-Code Test Automation Tool Replace Traditional Automation?

Over the past few years, the software industry has been witnessing a trend of low-code and no-code QA automation tools emerging as a way to increase the efficiency and speed up the automation testing process. However, some view low-code tools not just as an enhancement to the traditional automated software testing technique, but also as an alternative that can potentially replace software test automation processes we use today. So, can we expect low-code and no-code automation testing tools to take over traditional automation techniques?

The general consensus among automation testing engineers is that while low-code and codeless testing platforms can be very helpful for specific test runs, a mature automation project cannot survive on the record and playback feature alone. As of right now, the functionality of low-code and no-code tools is limited, so they can be viewed as an additional way to enhance the testing cycle, not replace code-based automation completely.

Who Can Do Test Automation?

The people involved in the testing process have the most immediate impact on the success of the whole endeavor. But when you are only about to give automation testing a try and don’t have a complete automation QA department yet, the question of who will actually handle the entire scope of automation testing is a perfectly natural question to have. Overall, there are three options for launching an automation testing project:

• Development team.
• Manual QA team.
• In-house or outsourced automation team.

There are many different opinions on which option is most suitable for automation. Most experts would agree that creating an in-house automation department is the preferred option. However, it often faces certain obstacles: namely, the large time and financial investments, as well as the lack of specialists of the desired level on the local hiring market. In that case, outsourcing some or all of the development and testing needs to a reliable testing partner can be the most effective solution. It’s also a good idea to study the best practices of creating an automation QA team, both for in-house hiring or outsourcing.

As for the choice between in-house developers and manual testers to get involved with automation — there is no universal answer to this debate. However, many automation QAs believe that manual QAs provide better test results with automation because they are conditioned to look for bugs and imperfections in software, whereas a former developer wants to build software that passes the tests rather than discover as many bugs as possible. Therefore, manual QAs make more meticulous and efficient automation QAs. At the end of the day, a close collaboration between development and testing teams is what leads to the most compelling outcomes of automation.

Test Automation Strategy: What It Is and How to Create One

A test automation strategy is one of the most important documents within a testing automation project. It’s a high-level document that outlines the approach the QA team will use to automate a testing project. The strategy not only helps allocate resources the right way and apply them where they matter the most, but also helps better understand and process the results of the project, gaining valuable ideas and insights to be used on the next projects. A strategy also increases the ROI of automation since it makes sure that the resources don’t go to waste and that all critical areas of the product are tested.

A test strategy should not be confused with a test plan: the latter is a more detailed document that focuses on the smallest elements of the testing project, while a strategy is more about the big picture. A thorough, well-written strategy touches upon the most vital aspects of an automation project, including:

• Project scope
• Project goals
• Testing environment
• Team size and composition
• Project duration
• Project milestones
• Tools and frameworks
• Possible risk and mitigation strategies

Creating an automation strategy is one of the most vital steps on the way to a successful project launch. Here is how to create a strategy that works perfectly for your next automation project:

1. Determine the scope of the project and its goals. In other words, what you want to achieve with the project and any intermittent goals you want to meet.
2. Define your team size and structure. It is possible to start an automation project with just one Automation QA Engineer, but if you go for that option, the engineer should be experienced enough to work without a Lead.
3. Gather the project requirements. Specifically, whether there has been any work done prior to the new project and where the project stands right now. It’s also important to assemble all the available documentation.
4. Identify the possible risk. Moreover, you’ll need to decide how the team is going to mitigate them. For example, one of the common risks is the lack of qualified personnel, and the way to mitigate it is to correctly estimate the resources needed for the project.
5. Conduct test case selection. Choose test cases that need to be automated based on the positive impact their automation will have on the overall project.
6. Choose the right tools and framework for your project. Check out the next section of our article to find out how to make tool and framework choices that will eventually pay off.
7. Set up the testing environment. This includes preparing the software (and, in some cases, the hardware), creating a testing schedule, and appointing the person responsible for overseeing the execution.
8. Write automation scripts. The most effective strategy here is to write simple, single-purpose tests and only combine them if necessary to avoid creating overly complex scripts. 
9. Run the tests and monitor the results. At this point, you will launch automated test scripts and review their outcomes. This is where a good reporting system will come in handy.
10. Maintain the test suite. This is the part of the project that cannot be overlooked — otherwise, the test suite can deprecate pretty fast and you’ll need to invest additional resources into reviving it.

For more information on what an automation testing strategy is, what it should include, and how to create a good one, take a look at our recent article on automated testing strategy creation.

How to Choose the Right Automation Testing Tool and Framework

Statistics indicate that 26% of organizations struggle with finding the right tool to enhance their automation capabilities. Different tools are created for different types of automation testing purposes. Tools can also be paid and open-source, which further complicates decision-making for companies operating on a budget.

Finally, there is always the option to create a custom automation tool to reap more potential benefits of automation, although this option is associated with high costs, advanced team skills, and delaying the project start to allow the tool to be developed. So, how exactly do you make the right choice from the dozens of tools available today? Here are a few things you need to consider:

1. Project objectives. Here, you need to decide what exactly you are trying to automate and what the desired project outcomes are.
2. Capabilities and limitations of a specific tool. Specifically, the right automation tool should support the necessary programming languages and testing types, as well as hardware and software characteristics.
3. Project budget. It’s very rare that an entire automation project can be run using just open-source automation tools. And paid tools can cost from a few dollars per month to a few thousand for a lifetime license.
4. Learning curve. This is where you need to match your team’s expertise to the ease of use offered by the tool. In some cases, training the team to use a new tool takes more time than finding a more familiar tool.
5. Community and support. Official customer support provided by the tool’s developers is always nice to have, but an active community can give you even more valuable tips and ideas.
6. Coding skills. Despite the growth of low-code and no-code tools, they cannot fully replace code-based solutions. However, the amount of coding skills required to get a project running can vary greatly.
7. Reporting. The very reason why you are launching a QA automation project is to ensure the application’s spotless functionality, performance, and security, so timely and detailed reports are a must-have feature.

It’s also worth noting that the automation testing tool also has its own trends and popularity ranks. Tools like Selenium Webdriver and RanorexStudio are familiar even to those without a lot of automation experience. So, when choosing the perfect tool for your next project, you can not only go through an extensive selection process, but also review the tools that are currently in active use across organizations globally. Here are the 15 popular automation tools you can consider.

Checklist for Finding the Perfect Framework for Software Test Automation

If your organization is in need of automation testing, then you are probably already aware of the fact that testing frameworks have the ability to impact automation in testing more than many suspect. The correctly chosen framework can help the team start quicker, speed up the testing process, and generate more consistent results. To help you make the right choice of a framework, we have prepared a handy checklist:

1. Establish clear automation objectives. Define goals such as reducing manual testing or increasing coverage, ensuring alignment with project needs. Set measurable KPIs to assess automation success.
2. Assess feasibility and scope. Determine which tests will be automated (for example, regression or cross-platform) and identify critical areas. Prioritize tests based on their complexity and value to quality assurance.
3. Choose the right tools. Select automation, reporting, and CI/CD tools that suit both the application’s needs and the team’s skillset. Ensure that tools support scalability and cross-environment testing.
4. Define framework architecture. Design a modular framework with reusable components, separating test data, configurations, and actions. Consider patterns like POM for maintainability.
5. Standardize environments. Create isolated test environments that mirror production for consistency. Automate environment provisioning, whenever possible, to enhance reproducibility.
6. Implement data management strategy. Plan for data generation, cleaning, and maintenance activities, ensuring consistency across runs. Use synthetic data or anonymized production data where possible.
7. Integrate with CI/CD. Set up pipelines that trigger automated tests with each build, offering immediate feedback. Schedule daily or weekly runs to catch integration issues early.
8. Incorporate coverage and analysis tools. Use code coverage tools and reporting to identify gaps and ensure comprehensive testing. Analyze results regularly to improve test case effectiveness.
9. Define clear exit criteria. Establish criteria for each test run, setting pass/fail parameters and requirements. This enables informed decisions on build quality and go/no-go decisions.
10. Implement detailed reporting and monitoring. Ensure that reports provide insight into performance, failures, and trends, automating notifications for test failures. Monitoring helps quickly resolve critical issues.
11. Encourage continuous feedback and improvement. Regularly review the framework to address inefficiencies and enhance stability. Gather team feedback to continuously refine automation strategies.

Automation Testing in DevOps

Automation testing is a crucial component of the DevOps framework, significantly enhancing the software development lifecycle (SDLC) by promoting speed, efficiency, and quality. As organizations strive to deliver high-quality software rapidly, integrating automation testing within DevOps practices becomes essential.

Importance of Automation Testing in DevOps

There are multiple benefits of implementing automation in the DevOps process. Companies are now investing time and effort into software testing automation, and its positive effect on DevOps is a big reason to do it. Here is how test automation in software testing benefits DevOps activities.

Continuous integration and continuous deployment

Automation in continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) has a transformative impact by enabling faster, more reliable software delivery. Automated tests within CI/CD pipelines allow teams to get instant feedback on code changes, identifying defects before they reach production. This early detection reduces deployment risks, minimizes time spent on rework, and ultimately speeds up release cycles.

To maximize automation’s benefits in CI/CD, it’s essential to maintain a comprehensive test suite that covers key functionalities and integrates seamlessly into the CI/CD pipeline. Additionally, regular updates and maintenance of test scripts ensure relevance as the application evolves. Leveraging parallel testing also enables faster execution, helping to keep pace with rapid deployment goals.

Increased efficiency

By automating repetitive and time-consuming testing tasks, teams can focus on more complex and creative aspects of testing. This shift helps reduce the overall testing time, leading to faster release cycles. As a result, the testing team can do more in the same amount of time and get the desired results faster without investing any additional effort into the process besides the initial setup and monitoring.

Consistency and reliability

Automated tests provide consistent execution, reducing the likelihood of human error and ensuring that tests are run in the same manner every time. This reliability is critical when scaling tests across multiple environments or platforms. With the use of the right tools, the QA team can get standardized reports from various sources and quickly process them to know exactly where the application’s quality is standing.

Scalability

Automation frameworks can efficiently handle an increasing number of tests, making it easier to adapt to changes in application complexity. Teams can easily add new test cases without significant increases in testing time or resources. This allows the organization to quickly accommodate any number of new tests in a reasonable timeframe, ensuring that the testing process can successfully keep up with the changing business and technical needs.

Best Practices for Implementing Automation Testing in DevOps

Taking advantage of software testing automation in the context of DevOps is undeniably a wise thing to do. But how exactly do you maximize the positive impact of automation on your DevOps process? These best practices have been tried and tested by industry leaders and can help you get the most of pairing the two activities.

1. Choose the right tools. Select tools that integrate well with your existing DevOps pipeline and support the technologies used in your application.
2. Maintain a test automation strategy. Clearly define which tests should be automated, prioritizing those that are repetitive, high-risk, or critical for business outcomes.
3. Ensure continuous maintenance. Regularly update and maintain automated test scripts to align with application changes, ensuring ongoing relevance and effectiveness.
4. Foster collaboration. Encourage collaboration between development, testing, and operations teams to ensure that testing is integrated throughout the SDLC.
5. Implement test-driven development (TDD). Embrace TDD practices to promote writing tests before developing the corresponding code. This approach ensures that testing is a fundamental part of the development process, improving code quality and facilitating easier automation of tests.

Why Can an Automation Testing Project Fail?

A test automation failure is the last thing you want to think about when embarking on an automated software testing journey. However, many conditions are required for automation to be successful, and that is why no project is immune to failure. In fact, by one estimate, 64% of automation projects fail to deliver on the stakeholders’ expectations.

Of course, there are different ways to define failure in an automation testing environment: for some organizations, a failure would be a project that does not meet the expectations quality-wise, while others consider a project to fail when it exceeds the projected time and financial investments. Still, automated testing projects often fail for the same set of reasons, and here are the most common ones.

1. Desire to Automate Everything

We’ve mentioned before that automating 100% of tests is not only unrealistic, but also simply unnecessary. However, some companies planning an automation project for the first time often fall into the trap of wanting to automate everything in limited time. As a result, the company spreads its resources too thin, causing the testing team to pay less attention to the most vital areas of the project and letting those promising areas go to waste.

2. Shunning Manual Testing

One of the key takeaways we want you to have from our article it’s that right now, it’s impossible to completely remove manual testing from the equation of software quality assurance. Rather, testing automation should be viewed as a way to save time on repetitive tasks and use that time for manual testing activities that rely on the human experience. Therefore, ignoring manual testing will eventually lead to the entire QA project failing to deliver any valuable results.

3. Wrong Choice of Tools and Techniques

The importance of a proper automated testing tool for the success of the whole project cannot be overrated. However, there are also certain industry trends that often cause curious testers to incorporate tools that are not exactly right for the job. These tools can stand in the way of everything you want to achieve with automation and cause a project to become a failure.

4. Disconnect Between Management and Technical Specialists

A comprehensive test automation project is impossible without the management and the technical teams being on the same page in terms of goals and how to get there. When the management simply expects an automation project to work and doesn’t really care what it takes, while the testing team doesn’t feel like their ideas and input are valued, the resulting different testing outcomes will likely not satisfy anyone.

5. Wrong Choice of Automation Software Tools

Test automation frameworks and tools have a paramount effect on the success of the project, and while the right tools can dramatically improve testing outcomes, a wrong choice of tools will thwart everyone’s performance. This also includes the desire of some organizations to pick only open-source tools because they are free — not every open-source tool can do the job or integrate with other tools, especially on complex projects.

Best Practices of Automation Testing

Launching an automated testing project requires a lot of effort from all participants, and that includes not only the steps needed to set up the project, but also following the industry best practices to achieve maximum efficiency and ROI. Here are the main automation best practices to follow.

1. Prioritize the Tests

As we’ve mentioned earlier, an attempt to automate everything will hardly ever pay off. Plus, companies usually don’t have unlimited resources to spend on automation. This is why it’s important to prioritize test cases to avoid excessive spending of valuable resources. Specifically, some of the most important tests to automate include:

• Tests dealing with core app functionality
• Tests that are particularly prone to human error
• Tests that need to be run on a variety of platforms
• Tests that incorporate multiple software builds
• Tests that require a lot of repetitive action
• Tests that use vast amounts of data

2. Strive for Clarity

The lack of clarity is what can sink even a successful automation project. This is especially common for tests that often produce false positive results or are otherwise inconsistent. The resulting absence of clear feedback forces the automation team to continue spending time on tests that don’t do anything for the success of the project. To achieve full clarity, the entire team should participate in regular reviews of the test suite and remove or update ones with inconsistent results.

3. Use Physical Devices for Testing

When your goal is to test on as many device and platform combinations as possible, it can be very tempting to use simulators and emulators instead of physical devices. And the accessibility and diversity of device emulators has come a long way in recent years. However, they are not yet capable of simulating real life conditions to the fullest extent, so you may never get a complete idea of how a regular user interacts with the product. Testing on real devices still cannot be beat.

4. Don’t Underestimate the Reports

At times, especially on a mature automation testing project where a certain quality benchmark has already been achieved, reviewing the reports may start to feel like a redundant task. However, detailed reports are invaluable for any test automation project. They allow teams to see when and where a software failure took place, what triggered it, how the rest of the application reacted, and so on. When a testing tool also comes with a screenshotting feature, the quality of the reports further increases.

5. Use High-Quality Test Data

The rule of thumb for using data in automation testing is simple: before adding test data into the system, make sure it’s of the right quality. This is especially vital for data-driven testing, which largely relies on the quality of data to provide reliable results. The test data you use must not only be accurate, but also contain exceptions and data that will deliberately trigger errors in the application and therefore allow you to test it from all angles.

Bottom Line: Do You Need Automated QA?

By no means, automation should be viewed as the universal solution to all software quality-related issues. For small, short-term projects operating on a tight budget, automation poses a threat of investing too many resources and still not getting a reliable outcome. However, it’s almost a given that any mid-sized or large, long-term testing project will benefit from automation. If you’re having doubts over whether your project can benefit from automation, you can always talk to our AQA experts to know for sure.