In the present-day Agile Development environments, automated testing has gained immense significance. With the help of automation, testers can prepare test data, and execute complex test cases that may be located in diverse platforms.
Despite the increasing use of automated testing, there are several problems affecting the automated processes. Due to these issues, automated testing may fail to deliver any value – which makes it pertinent to highlight some of them:
Problems Rooted in the Test Automation Mechanism
Automated Testing is gaining ground in recent times because it can accelerate the release cycles of software. However, the process has certain limitations that can sometimes put a spanner in the release cycle and affect future releases.
Specifically, if there are problems with the automation script, the testing process may fail, and the testers may not know whether the failure is because of the site or the script. In addition, another problem with automation is the unrealistic expectation that each time they are executed, automated tests will be able to find new defects.
Improper Approach to Testing
Automated testing does not simply revolve around the creation of effective testing scripts. It also requires a correct testing approach in accordance with the frequent changes in the Agile Environment. Automation may not be productive for an organization with poor testing practices because it may lead to exhaustive efforts in implementing and maintaining test scripts and test suites. If tests are poorly organized and documentation is incoherent, it may be difficult for testers to generate useful test reports and metrics. It would therefore, make good business sense to hire the services of an expert software testing company for this and other realms.
Lack of Detailed Technical Knowledge of Automation Tools
A test automation company usually emphasizes the proficiency of its testers in using various automation tools. There are however, several automation tools – like Selenium, Katalon, Cucumber, Cypress, Karate, and many others – for different testing purposes, and testers may not be experts at the optimal use of a specific tool. Wrong selection of tools can hinder test coverage, and the overall costs of tools may exceed the testing budget of an organization. Choosing a company that is proficient in a wide range of such tools will get you more value for every buck spent and every effort expended as a business.
Oversight of Environment Issues during Testing
Testers performing automated tests are chiefly focused on detecting functional bugs rather than considering ‘environment issues.’ Although the delivery pipeline is the backbone of software development and delivery in DevOps, testers generally overlook the problems in the test environments, the CI server, and the deployment scripts. An oversight of ‘environment issues’ can drastically affect the development and testing effort. It can also decelerate the deployment process.
Omission of Key Scenarios
In most Agile development environments, testers often tend to miss the key scenarios because they do not give due consideration to the crucial ‘Scenario Workshop’ activity. Since the detection of bugs is associated with test scenarios, the omission of key scenarios may result in serious issue leaks into production. Therefore, if testers do not create or test a particular scenario, even repeated automated tests will not yield the desired outcome in terms of the elimination of bugs.
No Testing of the Infrastructure
The spotlight in automated testing is largely on the automation of functional tests. Given this scenario, test automation engineers often fail to consider the potential infrastructure issues during the software development and delivery process. With hardly any testing of infrastructure, some of the infrastructure failures that usually show up include failure in integration points, breakdown of communication with third-party apps, and stoppage in results to API endpoints.
High Costs Involved in Update of Test Automation
One of the biggest challenges of automated testing is the costs of maintenance. Test automation needs to be updated each time the software is changed or updated, else automated tests cannot be re-run successfully. Typically, re-running the tests manually after software change involves comparatively less effort than updating the automated tests. Hence, a number of organizations discontinue their automation initiatives because of substantial maintenance costs. By partnering with a knowledgeable and expert company that excels at automated / software testing, will get your business several advantages in addition to keeping costs down.
Organizational Problems
Automated testing is usually considered a project issue in which organizational problems are often ignored. An organization in which there are no set standards to ensure that different teams use the testing tools in a consistent manner, chances are that each team may develop its own approach to test automation. This can pose difficulties with regard to the transfer or sharing of automated tests/testers among the teams. It is prudent to outsource the QA and software testing to a professionally run company, with years of experience in this realm.
In Conclusion:
The diverse issues affecting automated testing may make it a futile effort for an organization if automation is performed wrongly and without a structured approach. For automated testing to be effective, it is pertinent that testers remain aware of the challenges that accompany the implementation of automated testing suites. In addition, automated testing should fit the overall test management strategy of an organization so that it does not cause any obstacles / bottlenecks in the software development process. Leave these apprehensions behind by connecting with us today.
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