Test Automation – Issues and their Potential Solutions

The need for software testing will never go out of the organization’s priority list because as the days and years pass by, end-users’ demand for high-quality products is just increasing remarkably. Undoubtedly, it has become a mandate for organizations to follow the practice of conducting software testing to make sure their product quality meets the users’ expectations or otherwise organizations have to face “the dirt of the dark”. And making software testing efficient yet effective, test automation will always remain the hottest trend in the coming years as well. Test automation is best at making the long hour software testing process short and also allows organizations to save a heap of expenses while ensuring the product quality standards. But this is not all about the good side of automation testing, test automation goes bad when implemented in excess. For sure organizations are well aware of the reality that “excess of everything is bad” yet they consider implementing test automation for every single testing task will be the best thing they’ll do for their business productivity. However, this is from where the problem initiates.

Quite a large number of trust-worthy and competent independent automation testing companies are providing their services to make the potential use of test automation for their clients yet the need for in-house efforts to make the right use of test automation is always necessary. When the test automation is not implemented properly, then organizations have to face a row of infinite challenges and the desired testing objectives never get achieved. And if it gets too late then highly competent software engineers fail to tackle the issues. Concerning this alarming situation to enhance the knowledge base of business leaders under the software development and software testing domain about the number of challenges they may have to face, we have listed down some of the test automation issues along with their potential solutions that organizations can make to improve their testing procedures. 

The top 5 issues with the implementation of test automation are discussed as;

Illogical and silly expectations – Undoubtedly, test automation can be proved to be a productivity-boosting technique for many software development firms because it has plenty of fortunes for making the product look and feels as per the end-users expectations. But the bad news is, this can absolutely go wrong and can harm the organizations if the mere reliance on business productivity would be associated with the test automation results. Automating every single testing process must be a nightmare for the organizations as it decreases the chances of even a good enough business to be productive. Having the use of tools and machines to make the complex processes easy is a good thing to do but making the only use of tools is not good. 

Let us elaborate with an example of water vs cola drinks. Many people assume that consuming cola is also a form of water and they are healthy because of the right quantity of liquid intake. However, water is simply water. Nothing can replace the benefits of water for your body. Consuming cola is not what you can consider to count for your water intake routine. Similarly, automating every single procedure, using tools to even get the results as humans provide is something unrealistic. 

Humans have an innate power of evaluating even minor things effectively with their curious minds that is not possible for tools and machines. Eliminating the use of manual testing can only destroy an organization instead of assuming that it will be a productive approach to go with test automation alone. 

Utilization of erroneous tools – Automation, the word itself makes the reader or listener think that the discussion is about to begin about tools. So, test automation is also nothing without the use of tools, but the mandate in this regard is to have the use of accurate tools. One wrong decision about a test automation tool will make you cry forever, even the results can be major business failures. Choosing the wrong tool may result in scalability problems on top of never meeting your initial test automation goals.

But don’t you need to worry, here’s our pro tip to tackle this problem: Choose your test automation wisely. I repeat WISELY.  For a perfect selection of a test automation tool, you need to be well aware of your business needs. All you have to do is to come up with answers to the following questions;

• Does this tool meet your current goals?
• Can you afford this tool?
• Does it support integration with your team’s technology stack?
• What are your requirements criteria for the tool?

Neglection of important test cases – Wistfully, when it comes to automating the testing, many quality assurance teams randomly automate the test cases. This causes less coverage of tests and a pool of useless tests. The only possible solution to avoid such types of hindrances is making special efforts to evaluate what is valuable to automate and what is not. Before writing test scripts, researching is mandatory. Discover what’s worth automating and then you can start implementing automation where it’ll have the most impact. Select a proper testing approach, mind test metrics, and reports.

Shortage of proper testing – This is one of the most challenging things when it comes to testing automation. The shortage of proper testing happens when quality inspection teams depend heavily upon automation rather than spotting errors in the software products and apps. The one best way to handle this shortage is by providing training sessions to the quality inspection team members. Before implementing automation, train your team properly.

Conclusion

Getting the most out of test automation is often the dream of many software development business owners but it’s not as easy and simple as it seems. However, it’s not impossible as well. With an effective strategy and efforts to avoid the afore-mentioned threats, organizations can do wonders with test automation.