Why Automation Testing Tools Aren’t Enough to Drive Quality?

In today's world, technology is growing by the day. A faster and easier life is what the world demands, and following the system of demand and supply, IT companies across the world are investing both money and human resources to cater to this need. However, it’s not just about new ideas and making them available, it’s also about making sure that they function in the way they were supposed to. Although software testing was being conducted for decades, the slow pace and the unreliable nature of manual efforts wasn't serving the purpose. So, to solve this challenge, automation testing tools were introduced.

The arrival of automation testing tools made the quality assurance process much simpler. Especially repetitive tasks such as regression testing.  However, the quality assurance procedure, demands way more than the use of automation testing tools. It requires a sharp-minded QA team that considers quality to be their topmost priority. The issue is that testing teams often fail to understand the vitality of their roles. But just like everything else, this aspect can be taken care of as well.

Aligning QA Teams with the Business Outcome

Organizations can make QA teams understand the importance of their role through effective communication. At the end of the day, what is it that a business demands? - New clients, retaining existing clients and boosting revenue. And how is this possible? - By offering solution-based products and services that make life simpler. While developers do a great job in the creation of these products and services, only quality assurance professionals can make sure that it is living up to its claims.

So at a more strategic level, here’s what can be done:

Teamwork: It is important to inculcate a team approach between Development and QA from the very beginning.  Frequent interactions between the two not only help develop clarity but also help avoid misunderstandings.  As individuals, these two teams are often caught pointing fingers at each other, however, if a team spirit is adhered to, then together their focus can be aligned to providing a breakthrough solution, thereby achieving the business goals.

Customer-centric Approach: While working on a project, having a customer-centric approach would work wonders for a QA team. Focussing on usability and customer satisfaction can be a game-changing attitude in the quality assurance process.

Feedback Mechanism: Collecting and sharing reviews and feedback with QA teams is yet another great way of making them aware of what the customer thinks of the product. Knowledge of the user experience can enable QA teams to take corrective actions quickly.

Today, as the market has gotten more competitive, organizations have come to realize the importance of quality assurance. Companies across the globe have seen that the lack of strategically planned QA practices won’t just cost them the failure of worthwhile products but will also lead to a loss in revenue and stain their image. While automation testing tools, have made life easier for testing teams across the globe, the quality assurance procedure will not be 100% successful until QA professionals understand the vitality of their role. By using the above-mentioned practises you can align your QA team with the business outcome.

If you’re looking for an automation testing tool that will increase the productivity of your testing team by up to 5 times, then Qualitia’s script-less automation tool is the one for you. It reduces the time spent on regression testing by 60%. Further on, it’s simplicity and ease-of-use allows even manual testers and SMEs to automate, that too without any prior training.

Article Source: http://www.apsense.com/article/why-automation-testing-tools-arent-enough-to-drive-quality.html

How to Make Agile Test Automation Successful?

We all understand the criticality of agile test automation. Likewise, it is even more essential in bigger companies. However, the problem lies in that fact that it doesn't always work. In my experience, here are a few reasons why agile test automation fails to work in large organizations:

1. Poor Collaboration: Most large-scale IT development companies depend on large, diverse teams of specialists for product development. These teams often are assembled quickly and work together virtually, many-a-times over long distances, thereby restricting collaboration to online interactions.
2. Reliability is a Concern: Asynchronous waits and concurrency often cause flaky test scripts. These are a huge hindrance to Test Automation.
3. Maintenance Issues due to Scope creep: Existing automation suite might consume a lot of time for maintenance since Agile permits scope creep.
4. Presence of Specialized Skills: In large companies, most employees possess specialized skill-sets. Although this is a boon, it also has its drawback, especially while implementing Test Automation. For example, a skilled automation engineer will focus only on the programming aspects and not the functional ones and will lack domain knowledge.
5. In-sprint automation is Only a Dream: As much as we’d like it to be, automation doesn’t get implemented in the same sprint.

How to Roll Out Agile Test Automation Successfully?

1.  Adopt CI/CD: By adopting Continuous Integration/ Continuous Delivery, you can get benefits of collaboration and cross-functioning from the same team. This in turn, significantly improves the speed and software delivery process. Since CI/CD encourages shared working, wherein development, integration, and testing take place in real-time, it makes the entire agile cycle more effective.

2. Choose the Right Automation Tool: And most importantly, select the right test automation tool.

1. Features to ensure the success of the test automation in an agile environment include:
2. It should follow shift-left principle for application delivery. Start automation early in the game, when the requirements are being written
3. It should be OS and Browser friendly. The larger the number of operating systems and browsers it supports, the better it is for teams to perform testing.
4. It should meet end-to-end testing requirements.
5. It should be script-less, since productivity increases when no programming language is required.
6. It should provide integration support with cross-functional tools like continuous integrations, test management tools, bug tracking tools, etc.
7. The tool should be user-friendly and intuitive. The navigation, functionality, and UI should be easy-to-understand.
8. It should be robust and produce quick results so that testers can promptly respond to the test results.

If implemented appropriately, agile test automation can yield a lot of benefits. However, it is vital to have a proper automated testing strategy to understand and decide what tasks are worth automating. Tasks that are performed once in a way out shouldn’t be automated as the effort required to automate them generally doesn’t pay off. If you’re thinking of adopting agile test automation, the script-less software testing tool by Qualitia is the one-stop solution for all your needs. Its script-less approach allows you to leverage your existing team by empowering even manual testers and subject matter experts to participate in the process of test automation.

Article Source: How to Make Agile Test Automation Successful?