What is Automation Testing and why is it used?

The software testing industry involves two different kinds of testing- Manual and Automated. There are distinct differences between the testing types. Manual testing requires physical time and effort to ensure the software code does everything. Also, manual testers have to make a record of their findings. In this article, we will know What is Automation Testing and how it works in the following sequence:

• What is Automation Testing?
• Why Automation Testing?
• Difference between Manual & Automation Testing
• How does Automation Testing work?
• Automation Testing Approaches

What is Automation Testing?

Automation Testing is the process of using tools, scripts, and software to perform test cases by repeating pre-defined actions. Test Automation focuses on replacing manual human activity with systems or devices. Because automated testing is done through an automation testing tool, it consumes less time in exploratory tests and more time in maintaining test scripts while increasing overall test coverage.

The benefit of manual testing is that it allows a human mind to draw insights from a test that might otherwise be missed by an automated testing program. Automated testing is most preferable for large projects that require testing the same areas over and over. Also, projects that have already been through an initial manual testing process.

The test automation performs testing at three different levels:

1. Unit Level Automation
2. API Testing
3. User Interface

Related Learning: Types of Automation Testing

Why Automation Testing?

Test automation has many benefits for app testing cycles. This allows you to build better apps with less effort. Also, it is less time-consuming. Many companies still run only manual tests as they are now aware of how to properly integrate automated testing in their app development process.

Some of the reasons why Automation Testing is important:

• Running Tests 24/7: You can start the test from anywhere in the world and anytime you want to. You can even do that remotely if you don’t have a lot of devices or you don’t have the possibility to buy them.
• Fewer Human Resources: You just need a test automation engineer to write your scripts to automate your tests, instead of a lot of people doing boring manual tests over and over again.
• Reusability: The scripts are reusable and you don’t need new scripts every time. Also, you can redo the steps that are exactly as the previous ones.
• Bugs: Automation helps you find bugs in the early stages of software development, reducing expenses and working hours to fix these problems as well.
• Reliability: Automated testing is more reliable and way quicker when running boring repetitive standardized tests which can not be skipped, but may cause errors when manually tested.

Related Learning: Automation Testing Interview Questions

Difference between Manual & Automation Testing

Related Article: Manual Testing Vs Automation Testing

How does Automation Testing work?

Success in test automation requires careful planning and design work. The following steps are followed in an automation process:

1. Test tool selection

Any process starts with the definition, so before applying to test automation you should define the goal of automation. Now, once you are sure of what kind of tests are you performing, you need to select the software testing tool. You need to consider the following points while selecting the perfect tool:

• Is it easy to develop and maintain the scripts for the tool or not?
• Does it work on platforms like web, mobile, desktop etc?
• Does the tool have a test reporting functionality?
• How many testing types can this tool support?
• How many languages does the tool support?

2. Define the scope of automation

Next, you define the scope of automation. So, you need to decide which test cases to automate base on the following:

• Scenarios which have a large amount of data
• Test cases which have common functionalities across applications
• Technical feasibility
• The extent to which business components are reused
• The complexity of test cases

3. Planning, Design, and Development

After determining your goal and which types of tests to automate, you should decide what actions your automated tests will perform. Planning, design, and development include:

• Developing Test Cases: Large, complex automated tests are always very difficult to edit and debug. It is best to divide your tests into several simple, logical and smaller tests.
• Developing Test Suites: Test suites make sure that the automated test cases run one after another without any manual intervention. Now, this can easily be done by creating a test suite that has multiple test cases, a library and command-line tool that runs the test suite.

4. Test Execution

Automation Scripts are executed during this phase. Also, execution can be performed using the automation tool directly or through the test management tool which will invoke the automation tool.

5. Maintenance

Once test cases are executed, the next step is to create reports so that the actions performed during testing are recorded. As new functionalities get added to the software that you are testing with successive cycles, automation scripts need to be added, reviewed and maintained for each release cycle. Therefore, Maintenance becomes necessary to improve the effectiveness of automation.

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Now that you know how it works, let’s move ahead and look at the different approaches.

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Automation Testing Approaches

There are three main approaches that are considered for Automation Testing:

Code-Driven: This approach focuses mainly on test case execution to find out if the various sections of code are performing as per expectations or not. Thus, it is a popular method used in agile software development.

Graphical user interface (GUI) testing: Applications that have GUIs can be tested using this approach. Thus, Testers can record user actions and analyze them any number of times. Also, Test cases can be written in a number of programming languages like C#, Java, Perl, Python, etc.

Test Automation Framework: Framework is a set of guidelines used to produce beneficial results of the automated testing activity. Also, It brings together function libraries, test data sources, object details, and other reusable modules.

This brings us to the end of this article. So I hope you found it informative and it has helped in adding value to your knowledge. 

If you found this “What is Automation Testing” article relevant, check out the live-online Selenium Training for automation testing by Edureka, a trusted online learning company with a network of more than 250,000 satisfied learners spread across the globe. 

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