23 May Importance of an effective Quality Assurance Automation

Quality assurance is one of the most important processes in the software industry as it gives higher accuracy, better reporting capabilities, coverage, resource efficiency, bug detection, and reusability. Any company that is developing an application or an end-to-end system would know its importance. Today, automated testing services are creating a wave in the industry and for all the good reasons. Automation testing is used to create and run automated tests for the software that is being created. This type of testing is used in regression testing and is also ideal for user environment simulation.

Before we go any further, we need to understand that automation testing will not reduce the need for manual testers, as you would still need quality assurance experts to carry out the tests and analyze the results. Processes such as Agile, Lean and DevOps are said to be the next major trends in the testing industry. This means that quality assurance would not just be restricted to the software testers but the entire software development team would be involved in it. Critical thinking and quick problem-solving ability would become the crux of QA tasks.

Testing frameworks are no doubt an essential part of any successful automated testing process because they help in reducing the maintenance costs and testing efforts and provide a higher return on investment (ROI) for QA teams looking to enhance their buoyant processes.

When software testing is done manually to check systems, there could be an error especially when an application contains hundreds or more of lines of code. But automation helps the QA team avoid these application testing errors and executes it in a brisk timeframe.

Some test automation tools have the capability to report and log each test script to show the status of each test to the users. We can then compare the results with other reports to show the operation of the software and whether it was able to fulfil the expectations and requirements. In addition to this, automated testing helps to find bugs in the early stages of development and reduce the workload.

Importance of Quality Assurance Automation

Let’s look at the importance of QA automation testing services, the tools involved in it and the scenarios where automated testing is ideal.

• It has a defined folder structure which can easily trace the items.
• Portability is the crux of QA automation as it syncs up with any folder hierarchy, any drive location, and type of application.
• Handles errors and recovery scenarios within the framework rather than in the scripts.
• Function libraries for general use and project-specific purpose can be maintained in separate folders for easy handling and maintenance.
• Test data is maintained on a module basis and it can be updated as to when required without touching the scripts provided there is the security provided to the test data.
• Most importantly the framework is environment independent. By configuring the browser, OS, etc, the framework can be made environment independent.
• By scheduling the execution of batches, test results are easily understood by any tester with more details. This not only helps the tester to reproduce the defect but also capture the screenshot if there is a defect or script failure.
• Automation enables the emails to be configured with selected recipients.
• Scripting guidelines, naming conventions and standards are documented.
• Proper trace-ability is visible to understand the coverage of the automation and execution to the defects.
• After the execution, the framework provides for some data for analysis and metric preparation.
• The test framework is easy to expand and maintain with fewer references as against paid tools or other libraries.

Above all these, QA automation works as a continuous improvement plan to make the framework more matured. This, in turn, leads to reducing the manual effort and replace with the batch execution.

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