The software industry has become super-competitive. With so many stakeholders involved in the market, software companies are compelled to shore up their internal processes to be able to compete profitably. This means building better quality products with fewer bugs and updated features in a shorter amount of time. Unfortunately, manual testing isn’t cut out for the task.
Not only does manual testing take very long to execute, but it’s also expensive, outdated, and error-prone. Moreover, the recent rise in adopting agile and DevOps methodologies has forced companies to look for testing solutions beyond manual testing.
This is where automated testing comes in.
What is automated testing?
Automated testing is a process wherein software testing is done by leveraging automation tools and programs instead of a human tester. It involves preparing test scripts that run continuously and return results. The test results are then compared to the expected results to identify gaps, bugs, and flaws. It’s faster, more efficient, and offers better ROI.
There are different types of automated tests.
● Unit tests
This is the first level of testing. In unit testing, each software component is isolated and tested individually. The goal is to check whether the element performs its functions properly without being affected by other aspects of the software.
● Integration tests
This test is used to check how the different units perform as a coalition. It tests whether the units are integrated logically, communicating correctly, and their compliance.
● Smoke tests
It checks the stability of the system. Testers use these tests to check all the basic functionalities of the software before proceeding with other advanced tests.
● Regression tests
Every time a new feature is added to the software, it’s critical to ensure that the existing features remain unaffected. It is used to authenticate that a code change in the software does not impact the existing functionality of the product.
Why do you need automated testing?
Back when software developers preferred the waterfall model, they’d begin the testing and QA processes in the end. The QA team would develop a collection of ‘test plans’ to check each aspect of the software. Industrious testers and QA engineers would manually test newly added features. The QA team would share the results with the engineering team for further probation.
While this model worked well enough back then, issues began to crop up over time. Testing in the last phase of the development cycle meant bugs could only be identified and corrected in the end. This was an expensive process and delayed the market release of the product. Often, to shorten the development cycle, firms rush through testing, eventually releasing a frustrating bug-ridden product to consumers.
There was also a distinct disconnect between the development and testing teams, as they worked in silos. Moreover, manual testing required the QA team to spend most of their time on repetitive, non-productive tasks. The product quality suffered from less time to devote to exploratory and UI tests.
The last nail in the coffin was the introduction of agile development. Agile requires faster sprints, shorter development and testing cycles, and better collaboration between different teams. It also brought in the concept of shift-left testing, i.e., testing earlier in the development cycle. Manual testing processes couldn’t keep up with these changes.
Automated testing in agile tackles all these issues. It speeds up the testing process, increases test coverage, identifies more bugs, and perfectly fits agile. It enables teams to implement the continuous testing process effortlessly. Test automation helps free up personnel for business-critical tasks by automating long, repetitive tests.
A survey even shows that most software companies have adopted some form of automated testing. 24% of them saw returns within a short span of six months, while 28% reported 12 months for the same.
Simply put, test automation has found widespread adoption across verticals because of the distinct benefits it offers. But you can realize these benefits if organizations choose an ideal test automation solution. The solution should ideally have features like no-code, intelligent reporting, cross-platform testing, intuitive UI, and a pre-built keyword library. Avo Assure has all those features and more. It even helped a large Fortune 500 Bank attain 100% test coverage with 63% cost savings.
If you’re curious to learn how Avo Assure can do the same for your company, then book a demo today!
