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While the majority of enterprises are now adopting Agile and DevOps methods of software development to more quickly release high quality software, their manual testing practices are failing to keep up. Simply put, manual testing approaches are too slow, expensive, and error-prone to keep pace with today’s modern enterprise due to the excessive amount of involvement needed from humans.
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According to a survey by Gitlab, manual testing is the biggest bottleneck to software development. More specifically, the survey found that manual testing hinders development through clunky communication, slow test creation & execution time, and inadequate risk coverage. To combat these issues, organizations are embracing software test automation, which is one of the fastest growing sectors in the technology industry.
Learn more: Automation Testing vs. Manual Testing
What Is Automated Testing
Automated testing or software test automation, as the name implies, refers to utilizing automated testing tools, platforms, and machines to create and execute tests, rather than humans. It means that a test automation tool will handle many of the time-consuming tasks that were previously carried out manually. Automated testing is especially useful for continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/ CD) where software is developed, tested, and deployed multiple times per day, rather than in stages. Saying otherwise, software testing automation facilitates continuous testing to support agile development.
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What Are the Core Benefits of Software Testing Automation
At a high level, automated software testing is faster, less expensive, and provides better risk coverage than manual testing. Let’s dive into some benefits in more detail:
Automated testing saves time
Automated tests can be run more rapidly than manual tests because minimal human involvement is required, and tests can be run in parallel. Additionally, because humans are less involved with test creation & execution, there is less human error, meaning you need to spend less time fixing broken tests.
Automated software testing saves money
Once an automated test is created, it can be run repeatedly with minimal human intervention—meaning less labor is needed. Additionally, because automated tests can be run more frequently than manual tests, bugs are found earlier in the development cycle. These early bugs are far less expensive to fix than bugs found later in the development cycle.
Test automation reduces risk
Because automated tests are run more rapidly, bugs and security vulnerabilities are found earlier, ensuring organizations remain compliant. Additionally, with software testing automation, no trade off needs to be made between quality and speed: you can test all your critical business processes in a short amount of time.
The following types of tests are often automated:
Smoke Tests
Also known as Build Verification Testing (BVT), this type of testing is required in the initial stages of application testing. Whenever a new functionality is added to the existing build, smoke testing should be performed. Smoke testing acts as a checkpoint that indicates whether to move on to the next level of testing.
Integration Tests
Integration tests validate whether a proper communication is happening between different applications, modules, or technologies. As the tech stacks of organizations grow larger and larger, and become more interconnected, integration testing is vital to making sure that complex business processes–that span across multiple technologies–are working as intended.
Regression Tests
Regression testing ensures that bug fixes, configuration changes, or application updates haven’t impacted the existing functionality of the system. With the popularity of Agile and DevOps, dev teams are rolling out new features and functionalities on a more frequent basis, meaning that regression testing, too, should be performed more frequently.
Security Tests
To avoid bad actors gaining access to sensitive data, security testing is required. Security testing highlights shortcomings and fragilities in the system, and helps prevent threats, malware, and other risks.
User Acceptance Tests
User Acceptance Testing is the final phase in the software development lifecycle, and UAT’s main objective is to validate that the software is working as intended, from the end user’s perspective.
Read more: Why There’s a Need for Automated Web Testing
What to Consider When Choosing a Test Automation Tool
No-code platform
It’s important that the automation testing tool you choose doesn’t require coding knowledge, because non-technical users are often heavily involved in testing. Code-based software testing automation frameworks like Selenium require months of training to use effectively, whereas intelligent no-code test automation tools like Opkey can be learned in just a few hours.
Support for multiple platforms/ browsers
Because cross-application and integration testing are vital parts of a robust testing program, you should choose a test automation framework that supports multiple applications and makes it easy to create end-to-end tests. Furthermore, the automation testing tools should also be able to support tests on multiple browsers.
Availability of support
The software test automation tool you choose should offer exceptional customer support. Your applications depend on testing, and if your testing tool isn’t working properly, you need assurance that it’ll get fixed quickly.
Easy test script maintenance
Choose an automated testing tool with built-in AI that makes it easy to maintain test scripts. Software updates, patch releases, and customizations can all cause unexpected changes that require test script maintenance. AI can significantly ease the burden of ensuring that test libraries are up to date.
Read more: Test Automation Tools: Which One Is Right for You
How Opkey's Test Automation Platform Can Help
Opkey is globally recognized as one of the leading test automation frameworks. It is a no-code automated testing platform that seamlessly aligns with your CI/CD pipeline to facilitate continuous testing. Unlike other software testing automation tools that need time to set up, you can implement test automation from day one and reduce manual effort.
No-Code Automated Testing
Opkey supports no code automation testing. This means that business users as well as financial consultants can easily operate Opkey without requiring any programming knowledge. Opkey's ERP specific record-play engine allows users to effortlessly create test cases. Opkey enables one-click automated test script generation for your existing tests, leveraging AI technology.
Supports Different Types of Testing
Whether you want to automate regression testing, or you want to automate API testing, unit tests, or integration tests, Opkey can help. Here's a snapshot highlighting how Opkey supports automated regression testing.
Test Recommendation
Deciding what to test is still a daunting question. Opkey's built-in AI automatically highlights the impacted test cases and recommends what you should test during regression testing. This enables you to significantly increase your test coverage.
Test Scripts Maintenance
Test script maintenance is a very challenging task especially when you're receiving updates frequently - like in the case of Oracle where you receive updates quarterly. Opkey's built-in AI automatically identifies the broken test scripts and heals them without requiring human intervention. With the help of Opkey, organizations have brought down their test scripts maintenance effort up to 70%.
Learn more: How to Maintain Your Testing Program with Test Automation
Test Data Management
Test data is critical for robust software testing. Opkey's automated testing tool leverages test mining technology to autonomously mine test data from the client’s environment and ensure it’s in the correct format. Opkey also mines master data details such as Chart of Account, Employee, Customers, Item, Supplier, Procure to Pay, Order to Cash, and more, which can reduce your development and testing teams’ data collection efforts by up to 40%.
End-to End-Coverage
From ERP implementation to day-to-day operation, to ongoing optimization, Opkey delivers automated, end-to-end testing coverage of 12+ ERPs and 150+ technologies. Opkey's automated testing platform comes packed with 30,000+ pre-built automated tests so you don't have to start from scratch.
Summing Up
Software testing automation is faster, cheaper, and provides more risk-reduction than manual testing. While there are several factors to consider when choosing an automation platform, you should strongly consider the stakeholders involved–mainly end users–and be sure the platform you choose is no-code and supports multiple applications and technologies.
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