During the early years of the application development process, the testing phase was often ignored as the applications were straightforward and didn’t pose many obstacles in the development phase. However, with the advancement of technology, the demands of the end users began to rise dramatically. Now the users expect their applications to perform multiple functions simultaneously.
Moreover, thousands of users will access the application at a given point. So, the apps need to be very complex and stable at the same time. Therefore, the developers must perform rigorous testing on all the application components to ensure this process. Automation testing is a modern testing practice that helps to improve the efficiency of these test cases.
In this article, we will learn everything you need to know about automation testing and how to begin test automation. We will also discuss some of the best tools and platforms that can help developers to improve the efficiency of their automation test cases.
The History of Application Development
Manual testing is the process of verifying the proper functioning of all the components in the application manually. It requires human intervention at every step of the testing. During the early years of the development process, the developers used to conduct all the operations in the testing phase with manual test cases. Manual testing is a prolonged process as the developers have to perform these test cases on all the components of an application. Considering the complexity of modern apps, manual test cases can take almost several months to complete the entire testing process. Therefore, more than complete manual testing is needed, considering the requirements of the modern app development market. Moreover, in manual testing, the developers might even overlook errors that are critical for the proper functioning of an application.
During the early years, the desktop was the only platform for accessing different apps. However, with the advancement of technology, several other smart devices like smartphones, tablets, and even smart watches have arrived. Considering that these devices can provide a desktop-like experience while fitting in a user’s pockets, it is a common guess that users would love to transition to these devices. Recent data shows that over 55% of Internet traffic comprises mobile users. Therefore, the developers should verify not only the functioning of their applications on the desktop platform but also on these platforms. So, performing all of these test cases without the involvement of automation testing is next to impossible.
The Basics of Test Automation
As the name suggests, it is the process of automatically conducting test cases with the help of automated test scripts. Automated test scripts consist of a text file with all the predetermined parameters for testing an element of an application. While using automation testing, the developers also have the liberty of changing and configuring these parameters according to the requirements of their app development project. Moreover, the automation test cases are highly reusable. The developers can reuse a massive section of the code base in their future app development projects. The developers must remember that the initial expenses of introducing automation testing are quite high. Therefore, companies need to consider the business perspective before making this transition.
The developers can use various automation frameworks like selenium, Cypress, and Playwright for introducing automation testing. It is worth noting that selenium is the oldest competitor in this segment.
The Balance Between Automation Testing and Manual Testing
Considering the massive advantages of automation testing, it is a common phenomenon that developers might think automation testing can completely replace manual test cases. However, it is a complete myth, as certain testing processes cannot be conducted without human intervention. Let us consider the example of two prominent manual testing processes to justify our claim:
1. Visual Testing: It verifies the proper placement of all the UI elements in an application. It can include multiple elements like pictures, gifs, and even video clips. The developers must use their visual knowledge to ensure that all these elements are correctly placed, irrespective of variations in screen size and display resolution.
2. Exploratory Testing: Exploratory testing verifies a web application’s components and their overall performance when combined. It also finds certain errors in an application that automation test cases should notice. Therefore, exploratory testing is entirely dependent on the experience and knowledge of a human developer.
Considering both examples mentioned above, the healthiest practice is maintaining a proper balance between automation and manual testing. It is also crucial for the developers to plan all these test cases during the test planning phase. It can help them avoid unwanted obstacles during the application development and test execution.
Advantages of Automation Testing
Automation testing plays a vital role in improving the efficiency of test cases. With the help of its massive advantages, it has managed to dominate almost the entire app development industry. So let us take a look at some of the huge advantages of using automated test cases:
· Automation testing plays a vital role in improving the accuracy of the test cases. The system conducts the entire test case with minimal human intervention. So, there are almost no chances of any human error in this testing process.
· Automation testing reduces the load of repetitive test cases from human developers. It not only helps to improve testing satisfaction but also helps the developers to focus on other creative areas of an application. For instance, they can focus on new features that can be added to the app’s future updates.
· Automation testing allows the developers to test the functioning of the application on multiple platforms at the same time. It is one of the most vital components of the modern application development industry, as multiple platforms like desktops, smartphones, tablets, and even smartwatches exist. Therefore, we can see that automation testing has a vital role in improving the audience base for the company.
· With the help of automation testing, the developers can detect bugs in the application at a very early stage. Therefore, it saves the hassle of rolling an application back to the development phase every time a bug is detected.
· Automation testing helps developers introduce continuous development and integration in the application testing process. These are very important practices to improve the collaboration between the company’s testing and development teams.
Getting Started with Test Automation
The developers can start with automation testing by creating a test plan. Creating a test plan is an important process as it will consider all the scripts, tools, and libraries that the company will use during the application testing process. After creating the test plan, the developers have to follow the steps given below:
· The first step is to choose your desired automation testing framework, like selenium. After this, you have to download and install this framework from the official website.
· The next step in this process is configuring the framework and creating a new project. The developers can name the project according to the development process requirements.
· After this, it is time to create a new test file for developing your first automation test case. The next step is to initiate the testing process, wait for the system to execute it, and display the result. The developers can use this result for performing debugging actions on the application.
It is worth noting that the application testing steps will change depending on the preferred programming language and the testing framework. So, the developers need to conduct thorough market research.
Role Of Tools and Platforms in Automation Testing
Automation testing can be overwhelming for developers who are new to the industry. It is because there are multiple components of an automation testing process that the developers must be aware of. However, multiple tools and platforms are available in the current market, which plays a major role in the test simplification process. Moreover, these platforms also help the developers introduce additional testing features to improve test quality. For instance, cloud platforms allow developers to implement real device testing with the help of cloud servers. These servers have hundreds of real devices present on them and can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Let us improve our knowledge of cloud platforms with LambdaTest as a reference point:
To get an idea of the basics, LambdaTest is a cloud-integrated platform that helps developers ensure that their web applications stand up to modern cross-browser compatibility standards. Cross-browser compatibility is essential to ensure that you provide the best user experience to your customers, irrespective of variations in the operating system and browser version. LambdaTest allows the developers to introduce automation testing from multiple frameworks like playwright, selenium, and Cypress. It also helps improve the testing process’s efficiency with the help of parallel test execution. It is the process of executing multiple different test configurations simultaneously. LambdaTest has a unique way of improving the accuracy of test cases by combining reports from emulators, simulators, and hundreds of real devices.
Conclusion:
Automation testing is an essential component of modern testing practice. It is near to impossible to create a high-quality modern application without the involvement of Automation testing. Many experts also believe that automation testing will continue to gain increased popularity in the coming years.
Therefore, app development companies must adopt this transition as soon as possible. However, a recent statistic shows that only 60% of the app development market has transitioned to automation test cases. So, we recommend the remaining market make this transition to maintain its position in this competitive industry. Lastly, app developers need to realize that tools and platforms are essential for improving the effectiveness of automation test cases.
