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Game Changer for Automated Testing

Creating test cases is 77x faster with testup.io!
Modifications and maintenance are 14.6x faster!

Any IT application requires testing before a successful Go-Live. The automation of these tasks allows the inexpensive repetition and continuous monitoring of functionalities and has become commonplace. It is an integral part of modern Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD). As costs for implementation and adaptation are the driving factors in deciding whether to automate testing, this will be the focus of this paper. By hiring 12 test automation professionals where each of them has the same task but uses their respective favourite tool, we can benchmark these tools. Assuming that all tools find the correct issues, we will evaluate the tools based on the time it takes to create and adapt tests.

Read the whole article…

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X-info Switch from Selenium to Testup

The Challenge

Create an easy maintainable test suite

Our software is a dashboard to provide data visualization of manufacturing key figures. One of our customers is the leading automotive manufacturers in Munich. Our smart mining solution enables the management to optimize the output of all assembly lines. 

Our situation was that we performed manually the final acceptance of our dashboard data visualization software with us as the supplier. This required a lot of time with some communication loops. Some test cases were already written in Selenium, but this also cost us a lot of programming effort and tied up a lot of resources for maintenance and enhancement.

We were looking for a better solution that is faster and easier to maintain.

About the company

Xinfo is developing intelligent software solutions for the systematic improvement of efficiency, maintenance and QM processes.

Number of Employees

15

Industry

Automotive

Testup was used for

Replace Selenium tests and create a new test suite

ROI

Reduced manual regression testing time by 5x

The Solution – Replace Selenium with Testup

Switching from Selenium to Testup made our test suite more flexible and much easier to maintain

Within 6 months, the Thetaris team set up for us a cloud solution on premise in the customer network and built a test suite for all business functions.

Manage Execution Delay

Some response times of data analysis reports were a real critical problem for Selenium. Due to the large amount of data, the calculation of some results took longer than a minute. These results were no longer processed by Selenium in time.

Our new solution handles very long response times. During visual object recognition, Testup waits impassively for minutes before evaluating the comparison. Now the automation expert can set timeouts for each assertion easily.

Manage Testdata

One of the game changer was to connect a dedicated data snapshot to our test environment. All test case scenarios ran against the same test data source. The test environment was built in a container always before an execution of the test suite started. With this setup all regression tests returned comparable results.

Multiply Solution

It was easy to scale the tests to different locations (DE, EN, AUT, CN). Because tests in Testup can be created in modules, we could create robust test chains that could run against different manufacturing sites. Tests also returned comparable results on stage and production. Only one module, the login process, had to be changed, while the following test cases remained stable.

Analyse Results

With the automatically generated visual reports, the customer was able to preview existing and new features and provide us with much faster and more detailed feedback early during development.

Maintain Testsuite

With the solution found maintaining the test suite became natural. After a short introduction all colleagues could maintain the tests and easily add additional feature tests to the suite.

The Impact

New releases can be done much faster and the communication with the customer became much easier

The solution installed saved us and our customer at least 5 man days for each release.

Since the test cases can be created without coding the developers can now focus on their own tasks while the test can be extended by our designer and our technical writer.

The communication and feedback with our customers became more detailed and project-related as recording summaries can be printed out and presented to the customer for visual inspections:

  • Important requirements were confirmed by our customer right after the tests
  • With the visual test results, all new features of each software release are documented in detail, which increases the confidence in our product among all parties involved

Our customer was happy with the the new test automation solution since they get auto generated visual test reports done by Testup every day. This also improved the communication and feedback between customer’s project management and business lines.

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QA Bite ::: Integrate End-2-End Testing into your Build Pipeline

Developers need early feedback if a code change breaks functionality. Running your tests after each deployment is easy. On your Project Page press “Play”:

In teams, this gets more complicated. Therefore, you want to include the tests in your build pipeline. Then, you can pinpoint to the exact commit that broke the test. Either use our REST integration or the Zapier integration to achieve this.

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No code Automated Testing for React Application (Case Study)

Introduction

React is the most popular JavaScript framework on the internet. According to a survey by statista.com, 36% of web developers use React to develop web and mobile applications. React is currently being used in websites of popular brands such as Netflix, Google, Facebook, Quora, Instagram, Gitlab, and Yahoo.

React has also been referred to as the “future of frontend development” because it is easy to learn, deploy, and leverages Flux design pattern to manage client and server side interaction which is different and more effective than the old Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern. Hence, it is projected that more web and mobile applications will be developed with this frontend framework in the future.

There’s no doubt that testing plays a major role in the efficient development of web and mobile applications written with React. With Testup’s Automated testing, developers can save time and stress writing tests for all the features of their web and mobile application, no coding required.

In this article, we would be using Testup to perform Automated Testing for a React-based web application.

Testing a React-based Web application (Netflix)

Netflix, the world’s most popular movie-streaming platform was built with React. You can confirm this by simply searching for and installing the React Developer Tools extension for Google chrome.  Visit https://netflix.com and you will see the React icon appear as active. That is an indication that React was used to build Netflix as seen in Figures 1a and 1b.

Figure 1a
Figure 1b

Now let’s get started with testing the web application.

Step 1: Set Up the Test

Signup or Login to your Testup account. Click on Go to App, which is displayed at the top right-hand corner of the page. Then, click Create Project; afterward, click Create Test. Complete the necessary details requested under the Settings tab. These include the website’s URL and the name of the test case. For this test, the name of my test case would be ‘Testing Netflix Website’ and the website URL will be https://netflix.com.

Figure 2

After this, click Edit to begin the testing. The testing page appears as follows; with the Netflix website loaded on the left-hand side while the Actions list is on the right-hand side. The editor menu appears at the top.

Figure 3

Step 2: Start Testing

Recording a test usually starts with a check to see if the website was properly loaded. To do this, you can select an anchor area on the website and click play as check. However, because Netflix website has a disclaimer popup that shows upon load, we would be testing our anchor area with that. Click/drag on the close icon then click play as check as seen in figure 4.

Figure 4

Notice that the disclaimer popup closes after this has been done as seen in Figure 5 below

Figure 5

Now let’s check if the text input field and buttons on the page are working. To do this, we select click/drag on the text input field.

Afterwards, we can enter a value in the text input field by typing an email address, say jamiu@testup.io, and pressing the Enter key in the Editor Menu above.

Figure 6

We notice that the page then changes to the next page of the onboarding process as shown in Figure 7 below. This indicates that the text input field is active and is working.

Figure 7

I would also like to test if the scroll bar of the Netflix website works. To do this, I click/drag on the scrollbar on the far right side of the website. The line between the two circles shows where I am scrolling from to where I wish to scroll to as seen in Figure 8.

Figure 8

Afterwards I click on play it or wait for the action to be played automatically. Notice that the view changes from one part of the website to another. Hence, we can verify that the scroll bar for the website works as there is a navigation to another part of the website as seen in Figure 9.

Figure 9

Step 3: Automate the Test

Finally, you can get previously executed tests to run automatically. To do this, navigate to the Editor Menu and click on the Play button and then press the replay icon button. All previously executed test will then execute on their own automatically.

Figure 10

Conclusion

To perform testing in React applications, developers often use 3rd party dependencies such as Mocha or Jest. However, for most React developers, testing code is usually a very boring, time-consuming, and stressful process. This is because it deviates from the design and implementation of user interface components which is the fun part of frontend development. With Automated Testing, you can bypass the downtime of testing and still make your coding experience fun.  Fortunately, tools like Testup offers an affordable option without compromising the quality of the test. Getting started is easy, and you can start with a free trial; click here to get started.

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Important strategies to Succeed in End-to-End Testing

End to end testing is a method of software testing where a software application will be tested from start to end with the entire system flows with all dependencies related to the application. The purpose of the end-to-end testing is ensuring that an application is tested from a user perspective by stimulating real world scenarios so every operation will be validated with integration with components and data integrity.

End-to-end testing is one of the most complicated and challenging testing techniques in software quality assurance. End-to-end testing is important to any kind of software application as it ensures a quality user experience in the application which is a key objective of software applications.

The end-to-end testing process needs to be well planned in order to achieve success in the execution of the end-to-end testing. In order to be successful in end-to-end testing, organizations need to follow best practices and strategies.

Maximize Test coverage

Plan what needs to be tested before starting the end-to-end testing. The test coverage should touch upon all the end-user scenarios through the test cases so every feature will be tested through the end-to-end testing process. In order to maximize the test coverage, a detailed analysis of the requirement document and identify important user workflows in the given requirements documents. The focus should be on critical features of the system, the test coverage of the critical features should be higher than the non-critical features. Maintaining a requirement traceability matrix will be helpful to maximize the test coverage.

However, test coverage shouldn’t target only on the requirement itself; it should cover other aspects of the system such as alternative user workflows, how the system should respond during errors, how the system should respond to network failures and how the system is directing the user to use the system. A complete test coverage of the product can make the end to end testing process more useful for organizations. 

Walk in your end user’s shoes

During the test design phase, we should always think in a user perspective towards the application rather than focusing on implementation of the application.  Each user-based workflow should be defined properly in test plan/design flow targeting key features.

When defining the end-to-end testing scope for the application, be mindful about what the end goals of the user are? Are the goals achieved in a user-friendly manner? Are the applications up to the expectations of the user? Answers of these kinds of questions need to be analyzed thoroughly on planning the test plan of the end-to-end testing strategy.

Getting into the user’s mindset is complicated for a software development team. The best techniques to achieve this will be creating a mind map of user workflows and making the maximum use of user stories with personas so a clear understanding of the workflow can be derived through these techniques.

Use an efficient Test environment and meaningful test data

End to end testing needs a stable environment without interruptions in order to execute a successful end to end testing workflow. End to end testing needs an environment which has enough capacity to handle multiple test runs, multiple user stimulations and with zero down times during tests.  In order setup such environments it should be planned ahead considering the depth of the tests and environment

The data used for the testing should be meaningful where it should be generated from a user perspective. Using dummy data for end-to-end testing won’t be effective where those data are not meaningful and if the end user will never input such data for the system. In order to create meaningful data the domain of the application should be considered and it should be prepared based on it.

Organize the tests systemically in the right order

It’s important to find the defects in the system as early as possible where fixing defects in the final stages will be costly. Each type of testing should be planned and executed in the right order and end to testing will take place after unit, system, and integration testing.

The tests in the end-to-end suite need to be arranged based on the system priorities. The teams should decide the order of the tests to be executed in an efficient manner which makes sure that all the critical workflows are tested before mini features are tested. The critical failures can be identified early by setting up the tests in the write order.

The structure and organization of the tests based on the understanding of the system requirements are fundamental to the end-to-end testing process.

Make use of Automation tools

End to end testing is a time consuming task and there are instances where repetitive tasks are involved. Doing end to end testing manually requires lots of time and effort. The modern software systems get complicated day by day and there is a need for frequent releases with new updates based on the market requirements so testing teams need to perform frequent end to end testing multiple times.

In order to overcome such challenges, making use of automation tools can be beneficial.  Automating end-to-end testing through tools will save time and solve repetitive tasks in the process of end-to-end testing.

Automations tools can be selected based on company preferences and there are several tools in the industry to choose from. Automation tools can be categorized into two types: test automation tools require coding and codeless automation tools. The tools that require coding are powerful customizable based on the needs of the end-to-end strategy. However, there is a downside of using coding-based automation tools where it requires separate teams to write the code in a specific programming language and maintain it where manual testers need to be trained to be an automation engineer.

 The codeless automation tools will solve problems such as programming skills in testers, debugging time and dependent on programming languages.  The codeless automation tools are easy to integrate, scripts can be created easily and testing reports can be generated easily.

Testup is a codeless automation tool that can solve many of the end-to-end testing faced by the organization. The tool is easy to set up in minutes and the tool is focused very much on usability aspects. Complex test scenarios can be easily manageable through it and tests will be robust which covers most of the quality aspects of end-to-end testing. Give it a try!

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What is Test-Driven Development and How to Do It?

When building new software, one of the major concerns of developers is how to test the software to make sure that it works fine. There are many ways to test software. Most of the time, you will write some code and then create a few test cases to test the functionality of that code. That’s not a bad system, though. However, what would happen if we flipped that procedure on its head? What if we created tests first and then wrote code to pass those tests?

What is Test-Driven development?

Test-driven development is a practice in software development where you first write test cases to define the functionality of code before implementing the actual code. Simply said, test cases for each functionality are written and tested first, and if any of them fails, new code is written to pass that test.

In TDD, test cases are designed and developed for every single functionality of the software. The concept behind TDD is to correct code to pass the failed tests before writing new code. This approach helps avoid any duplicate code, as in TDD, developers write a small amount of code at a time that is only sufficient for passing the test.

TDD Vs. Traditional testing

The major difference between traditional testing and test-driven development is that in traditional testing, testing is performed at the end of the coding, whereas in TDD, testing is performed before writing the code.

TDD is basically a specification technique that ensures your code is thoroughly tested at the initial phase of the development. Moreover, TDD ensures that your system fulfills the specified requirements for it and helps to build confidence in your system.

In traditional testing, a successful test will discover one or more bugs, and when a test fails, there’s a process as you know what should be done to pass the test.

TDD focuses on production code that verifies if testing will work properly. On the other hand, traditional testing focuses more on test case design and if the test will indicate proper execution of the software to fulfill the requirements.

With TDD, you can achieve 100% test coverage for your code. Every single line of code will be tested, unlike in traditional testing.

Benefits of Test-Driven development

Improved focus on development.

The nature of TDD is to retain your focus on the specific module you are working on without jumping around other segments of code. This leads to better productivity since it reduces the switching of context. If you do so, it may leave some parts of the code uncompleted, resulting in longer development times and more bugs.

Better quality of code

Testing a piece of code insists a developer define the functionality of that code. Being able to do it easily means that the functionality of that code is clearly defined with high cohesion. If you can perform unit testing on that code, it can easily be integrated with the rest of the project. It has low coupling to other code segments around it. This low coupling and high cohesion are qualities of a well-designed, solid, and maintainable code.

Easy refactoring

Once the tests are passing, they will have your back from then onwards. Whenever you want to make sure that new changes don’t break previous code, you just have to re-run your tests. Simple enough. Isn’t it?

You can also use TDD when working with legacy code or code from another developer. Apply TDD for the new code you are going to write, and if something goes wrong, you can verify that there are issues in your code. That will save a lot of time debugging and trying to find out what has gone wrong.

This way, TDD saves plenty of time and effort for code refactoring.

Up-to-date documentation

Above all, TDD tests can serve as perfect documentation for a developer. If you want to know how a specific class or code works, you can go through the tests and find out. It is possible as when you create the test, you plan and think about how to use that class. Therefore, you can identify all the required inputs, methods, and expected output. This becomes very useful when new members are joining the project.

How to perform TDD

The basic TDD process revolves around five simple steps, which are repeated throughout the software development life cycle (SDLC). The purpose of these steps is to ensure that the code is clean and efficient while fulfilling all the functional requirements of the system.

  1. Write a test
    Since development is driven by tests, it’s obvious that the first step is to write a new test. This test should be concise and simple, testing a very basic component of a large feature.
  2. Verify that the test fails
    After the test is written, the next step is to verify that the test fails. The main goal of TDD is to make you consider the requirement of a feature or a segment of code. By confirming that the test fails prior to implementing the feature, you will be confident that the test is useful and will be needed once you write code to pass the test.
  3. Write code to pass the test
    After verifying that the test fails, you have to write code that enables the test to pass. An important thing to note here is that you should not write any extra code that surpasses the scope of the test. As we focus on writing the simplest test possible in step1, here, you have to write the simplest code possible.
    Code written in this step will seem rough and unstable. However, it’s fine since the TDD cycle encourages constant refactoring of code, signifying that your current code could change numerous times in the future.
  4. Verify that the test passes
    Once the code is written, now you have to confirm that the test passes with that code.
  5. Refactor
    During this final step, even if you have a passing test, the written code may contain some duplications or inconsistencies. That’s quite normal, and it’s important to use the refactoring step to identify those problem areas and simplify the codebase.

This process should also include constant re-running of all the past tests to ensure that you haven’t accidentally brought in any new bugs or altered something that causes a previously passed test to fail.

On top of that, there are a few rules in TDD which will make your life easier. They are as follows,

  1. Not to write any production code unless it is to pass a failing test case.
  2. Not to write any more of a unit test than enough to fail.
  3. Only write sufficient production code to pass a failing unit test.

How TDD is done in TestUp?

TestUp is a new entrance to the test automation field, and it automates the testing of all the test cases in test-driven development. With TestUp, you can design user flows as tags and continue with the development. Then, simply fill the test steps in TestUp and approve the user flow as you wish. This is a small guide on How you can do TDD with TestUp.

Wrapping Up

In the world of software development, TDD is a reliable and accurate development practice developers can use to ensure robust code throughout the entire software. More than that, it’s a way to make sure that the final product is flexible and adaptable up to a point where adding new features and ongoing maintenance can be done without impacting the overall product.

Learning how to implement TDD effectively is not an easy task. It may require time, dedication, and sometimes an entire modification to your programming mindset. However, if you achieve it, you will understand that TDD is really worth all the effort and even more.

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7 Ways Automated Testing can Help You Save Time and Money

Introduction

One of the worst things that can happen to a web or mobile application is for it to be riddled with bugs upon deployment. This will limit the application’s ability to solve the problems for which it was built. But that’s not all, it will also negatively impact user experience and trust in your brand, making you lose users to competitors. However, there is one way forward, Testing!

Testing is the process of trying out the features of your application before deployment and they are majorly two types: Manual Testing and Automated Testing. Manual Testing involves an individual downloading or accessing the application, clicking on buttons, checking out features to see if they work, and navigating through pages to confirm if they are well linked. It is worthy of note that this method of testing is prone to inaccuracy due to human error or negligence.

Automated Testing, on the other hand, is a process that involves using an automation tool to execute test case suites and predefined actions on a software application. The testing tool takes real outcomes and compares them with the expected result to generate detailed test reports. This method is the most effective way of testing as it is fast, more reliable, and efficient.

In this article, we would be sharing ways through which Automated Testing can help you save time and money.

1. Grows User Retention

Users have a low tolerance for faulty applications. According to an article by TechCrunch, 88% of people say they would abandon an app if they encountered bugs or glitches. Results also show that most apps are buggy because they went through Manual Testing which was unable to properly spot possible bugs and errors before deployment.

With Automated Testing, there’s a significantly lower chance of encountering a bug or app failure. This is because Automated Testing is more meticulous and less prone to human error such as fatigue or loss of interest during testing. With Automated Testing, you get to keep your users and reduce your churn rate, thus helping you grow revenue.

2. Builds Confidence in Your Brand

Most of the apps in App stores are buggy. According to a survey by Compuware, 56% of app users say they have experienced one form of error or the other while using an app. They also said this led to them losing confidence in the app’s reputation and brand, prompting them to give bad reviews of the App.

Through Automated Testing, you can significantly reduce the chances of your app ever getting a bad review. This is because you will be able to detect bugs much earlier before deployment and fix them before making your app available online or in the App store.

3. Encourages Focus on Developing More Features

Automating your app testing gives your engineering/software team more time to be creative, think outside the box and come up with new, exciting features that will keep your users hooked. This is because less time is spent on testing. Furthermore, it boosts the confidence of the engineering/software team, giving them the necessary wherewithal to explore new ideas without fear of building a feature that could break the app.

4. Improves User Experience

The major reason anyone would want to use your app is that it solves a particular problem they currently face. A fundamental part of user experience is how well your app can solve the problems faced by your users. Above all else, this would be the factor that determines whether users come back to use your app or switch to a competitor.

With Automated Testing, you can ensure that your users do not experience an app failure that would compound their problem rather than help them solve it. This helps you increase the number of transactions and activities on your app, thus resulting in more revenue.

5. Encourages users to talk about your App

Because many apps are buggy, an app that does what it says it does and works without bugs will stand out in the marketplace. This alone could even be enough marketing for your business in the form of word of mouth.  And with this form of marketing comes a significant boost in sales and revenue. For instance Dropbox, a Google Drive competitor grew to become a $10 billion app majorly based on Word-of-Mouth alone. Getting the goodwill of your users also builds brand loyalty, scalability, retention rate and reduces the chances of your users jumping ship to use a competitor.

6. Faster release of App to market

Automated Testing saves you a lot of time. According to the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), software testing is the 5th Phase and it typically takes between 1-2months if performed manually by the QA and testing team. However, with Automated Testing, you can complete the Testing phase of the Software Development Life Cycle in days, not months hence giving your app a faster time to market.

If your app is developed to solve a novel problem, this could be the difference between you having a First Mover Advantage over your competitors and gaining market share without worrying about whether your app is bug-free or not.

7. Improved Return on Investment

Most times, the reason businesses are skeptical about using Automated Testing is because it is more expensive than Manual Testing, and this is reasonable in the short-term. However, the long-term benefits of using Automated Testing greatly supersedes the short-term benefits of saving cost by performing Manual Testing. This is because Automated Testing saves a lot of time, energy and gives you a bug-free version of your app. Furthermore, Automated Testing encourages scalability – enabling you to reach more users and grow revenue over a short period.

Conclusion

It is quite obvious that the benefits of Automated Testing greatly outweigh that of Manual Testing. So if you want to build scalable, bug-free apps faster, Automated Testing is the way to go. However, it is worthy of note that the success of your Automated Testing depends largely on the tool you choose to perform the test. There are so many out there that it can be very difficult to choose the one that is best for you.

Testup is a Visual Automation Testing Tool that makes it extremely easy to test your application. It is easy to set up, does not require coding, and can handle complex testing scenarios. You can get started with a free trial of Testup by clicking here.

Happy Testing!

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Comprehensive list of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Tools (2021)

Introduction

Robotic Process Automation(RPA) tools are mainly associated with the configuration of task automation. There are numerous RPA tool vendors, and choosing one could be overwhelming. However, following this well researched list is a good place to start. This list features 10 popular RPA tools in no particular order.

Logo UiPath www.uipath.com

UiPath RPA is a high-level platform dedicated to providing seamless automation of data entry on any web form & desktop application. It supports Excel and provides SAP and Citrix integration.

What’s the user interface of the tool?Web, Desktop
What’s the automated system under test?Android, IOS
Programming Style?HTML, Flash, AJAX, PDF, Java and Silverlight
What’s the price range?$3990/year/user
Is there a free trial?Yes

Logo Automation Anywhere www.automationanywhere.com

Automation Anywhere is the leading Robotic Process Automation (RPA) platform. The enterprise-grade solution combines sophisticated RPA, AI and embedded analytic technologies to create software bots to automate and manage front and back office tasks.

What’s the user interface of the tool?Web, Desktop, Enterprise Applications (Salesforce, Microsoft Excel, G Suite), Mobile app
What’s the automated system under test?Android, iOS
Programming Style?Python and Java
What’s the price range?$9000 /user/year
Is there a free trial?Yes

Logo Appian www.appian.com

Appian provides a software development platform that combines intelligent automation and enterprise low-code development to rapidly deliver powerful business applications.

What’s the user interface of the tool?Web, Desktop, Mobile
What’s the automated system under test?Android, iOS
Programming Style?Java
What’s the price range?$60/month/user
Is there a free trial?Yes

Logo Pega Platform www.pega.com

According to its vendor, Pega Robotic Process Automation (RPA) enables organizations to automate those tedious, time-consuming manual tasks.

What’s the user interface of the tool?Web, Desktop
What’s the automated system under test?Android, iOS
Programming Style?Java
What’s the price range?$90/month/user
Is there a free trial?Yes

Logo blueprism www.blueprism.com

Blue Prism Intelligent RPA can automate and perform mission critical processes, designed to allow users the freedom to focus on more creative, meaningful work.

What’s the user interface of the tool?Web
What’s the automated system under test?Web and different applications
Programming Style?Java
What’s the price range?Price not provided by vendor
Is there a free trial?Yes

Logo nintex www.nintex.com

Nintex RPA automates repetitive, manual business processes. From projects in Excel to CRM systems, Nintex RPA enables enterprises to leverage trained bots to quickly automate mundane tasks more efficiently.

What’s the user interface of the tool?Web
What’s the automated system under test?Web and different applications
Programming Style?no code
What’s the price range?$85/month
Is there a free trial?Yes

Logo Electro Neek www.electroneek.com/

ElectroNeek lets you automate hundreds of attended and unattended processes and run them concurrently at no cost, paying only for developer seats.

What’s the user interface of the tool?Web, Desktop
What’s the automated system under test?Web and different applications
Programming Style?JavaScript and Python
What’s the price range?$5400/year
Is there a free trial?Yes

Logo Zapier www.zapier.com/

Zapier’s integration platform allows the automation of daily tasks that involve using two or more applications.

What’s the user interface of the tool?Web
What’s the automated system under test?Web and different apps
Programming Style?No code
What’s the price range?$0 – $599/month
Is there a free trial?Yes

Logo MS Power Automate flow.microsoft.com

According to Microsoft, Power Automate allows anyone with knowledge of the business process to create repeatable flows that when triggered leap into action and perform the process for them. Power Automate became more robust in May 2020 when Microsoft acquired Softomotive. With the acquisition, WinAutomation, the most powerful and intuitive platform for Windows automation became a part of Power Automate.

What’s the user interface of the tool?Web
What’s the automated system under test?Web and different apps
Programming Style?No code
What’s the price range?$15 – $500/month
Is there a free trial?Yes

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Why is it So Hard to Introduce Automated Testing in Your Development Process

Automated testing is all the rage in agile contexts these days. There’s no wonder since it works great for many types of testing and helps QAs execute complex test cases located on various platforms and involve a lot of data. It also benefits organizations in multiple ways, such as increasing the productivity of the test team, enhancing software quality, and reducing the time to market.

However, organizations have to face a lot of challenges when trying to apply automated testing into their development process. The seven most common challenges that make the transformation from manual testing to automation more difficult are the following:

  1. Not having a clear idea of what to automate
  2. Difficulties in picking up the right automation tool
  3. Lack of communication and collaboration within the team
  4. Difficulties in choosing a testing approach
  5. High upfront costs
  6. Not having skilled resources for automation
  7. Understanding the prospects of stakeholders and end-users

So let’s have a closer look at the challenges.

1. Not Having a Clear Idea of What to Automate

If you believe that 100% automation is possible, you are dreaming. You can’t automate each and every single test case. Some tests will be difficult to automate due to technology constraints. Specifically, in areas such as compatibility, user interface, or recovery, most of the testing needs to be done manually. For example, some testing frameworks will not support test cases that run across several browser sessions or different devices. Therefore, before you start thinking about automation, you have to come up with a list of criteria that test cases must fulfil in order to be automatized.

The ROI on automated tests varies depending on several factors. Thus, you have to decide which test cases are critical and need to be given a high priority when automating. Normally, it’s the areas that are

  • exposed to risk,
  • of importance to clients,
  • or feature complex business logic.

Recognize these application areas and test case specifications to ensure that your automation efforts payback.

It’s a good idea to automate test cases that run in different environments, with different sets of data or large volumes of data. In contrast, you shouldn’t try to automate test cases that needed to be run once or twice like test cases for a rarely used feature. 

2. Difficulties in Picking up the Right Automation Tool

This is a major challenge most development companies go through when introducing automated testing. Test automation requires tools and development teams to find it difficult to choose the right tool for various reasons, as listed below.

  • Testers are lacking the necessary skills to make the most out of a particular automation tool.
  • Selected tools are not offering 100% test coverage.
  • The cost of automation tools exceeding the test budget.
  • Not knowing if the tool they need exists.

Various steps can be followed in order to mitigate these issues. For instance, if your testers don’t know how to use a specific automation tool effectively, you can arrange a training session with its provider, prepare an online course for them, or recruit a consultant who can help your testers to master it. If you’re still searching for the right automation tool, reach out to the testing community.  Forums like Stack Exchange are a valuable source of information.

Among numerous automated testing tools available in the market today, Testup is a new player that stands out of all the rest due to its excellent and unique features. It enables easy setup for users with a high focus on usability and supports complex test scenarios to boost your software quality. 

Testup covers all the essential use cases such as Front-end testing, End-to-End testing, CI/CD, Test-driven development (TDD), Robotic Process Automation(RPA) and many more. Codeless test automation is one most impressive features of Testup that saves enormous time for developers. In the future, Testup is likely to address most of the challenges organizations face when trying to adapt to automated testing.

3. Lack of Communication and Collaboration within the Team

Automated testing usually requires more communication and collaboration between team members than manual testing. You cannot run a successful testing process if the team fails to get involved adequately in setting automation targets and goals. Therefore, the team members need to be actively involved there.

Automation depends on historical test data, experience, and sometimes even proof of concept that can be obtained only through your team. Thus, the entire team should stay on the same page for automated testing to work properly.

Furthermore, you need to gain solid team management support on hand before you start with automated testing. It is also important to build a collaborative working environment where team members can communicate with each other regularly to deliver test results timely with minimum risk.

4. Difficulties in Choosing a Testing Approach

This is another most significant challenge automation engineers face when trying to go ahead with automated testing. They need to find out the right test automation approach to suit their needs. For that, they may need to ask the following questions from themselves:

  • How can we reduce the implementation and maintenance cost of test suites?
  • Will the selected automation tool be able to generate useful test reports?
  • Will these test suites last a long period of time at our company?

The above points are highly important when it comes to an agile development environment where the testing application constantly changes, and test automation should be implemented to identify these changes, helping the team stick into a cost-effective maintenance strategy. Therefore, you should consider embracing an automation solution that automatically detects these changes and updates or re-validates the test.

5. High Upfront Costs

Test automation will involve high costs at its initial phase. These costs associated with setting up a test automation suite hold back many companies from incorporating automated testing into their development process.

Therefore, make sure to analyze and create a test automation framework including elements like libraries of reusable functions before proposing the automation suite to the management. You need to add hardware costs as well as software costs, including licensing costs if you intend to use paid software. Even if you pick an open-source solution, you still have to consider some costs, such as maintaining and providing training. 

Convincing the management that test automation is worth all the effort might be a difficult task. However, the potential ROI is a clever argument there, so prepare an automation strategy along with a complete budget and go for it.

6. Not Having Skilled Resources for Automation

In automated testing, the teams have to design and maintain the necessary test automation frameworks, along with test scripts, build solutions, and many other vital elements. Therefore, the teams need to have a solid understanding of the design and implementation of the automated testing framework to work as expected. That’s the reason why you should build your team with testing resources who possess strong programming skills and test automation skills.

However, with Testup, organizations can eliminate the demand for skilled resources in automated testing since it is a no-code automation tool.

7. Understanding the Prospects of Stakeholders and End-Users

It doesn’t matter how perfect your testing tools or resources are – you have to always bear in mind that testing can’t be conducted in a vacuum. It serves a specific objective which is basically improving your software product.

While automated testing is a great option for automatically checking your software for bugs, humans still need to carry out non-automated testing scenarios. These tests return plenty of useful information to make optimal decisions for improving the system, not in the view of developers but the end-users.

Because of that, it’s important to make sure that the management, your testing team, and other stakeholders all understand and accept the expected results of your test automation strategy before implementing it.

Bottom Line

While test automation can bring plenty of benefits to testing teams and organizations, it can be difficult to implement due to various issues and constraints. Anyway, if you identify the challenges involved in introducing automated testing and prepare well for them, your organization can reap the benefits of it.

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Why did Automated Testing Disappoint so many Companies?

Introduction

To guarantee the quality of products, it is important that product development companies embrace testing. That’s not all, the way this test happens is also crucial. Over the years, manual testing has proven to be an approach laden with so many cons than pros. A way forward out of this is test automation. With test automation, companies have an incredible opportunity to increase the efficiency and coverage of software and product testing. Among many other benefits, test automation reduces time, gets rid of human error, reduces expenses, and provides better insights for product improvement.

However, just like every technological solution, test automation comes with its complexities. Therefore, if not implemented properly, it can bring disappointment. In this article, we will explore the possible reasons why test automation may fail you and thereafter provide a viable solution that you can leverage on, moving forward.

Test Automation Failed You: Why?

Setting unrealistic Expectations

Expecting 100% automation is practically impossible. Therefore, the beginning of the failure of test automation is when a team sets their expectations so high that they cannot be achieved. As much as possible, expectations should be realistic. This fundamental axiom also applies to test automation.

Use of a Poor Test Automation Tool

If we start counting the number of test automation tools available today, we will lose count. The market is flooded with too many tools than you can imagine. For this reason, it becomes difficult to separate the quality ones from the noisemakers. However, while it may be difficult, it is not impossible. The most important factor to consider when choosing a test automation tool is your testing needs and primary goals. The reality is that every tool has its unique capabilities and your team needs to focus on finding the one that effectively aligns with your needs and requirements. Generally, we recommend Testup as a viable and affordable no-code test automation tool. Later in this piece, we will highlight the reasons why you may want to consider using Testup.

Disregard for Parallel Execution

One reason why some companies fail at test automation is that they get themselves caught in complex test suites that take forever to execute. In such a situation, test cases that are on queue end abruptly after timeout. Ultimately, the quality of the test gets compromised. In a nutshell, what this implies is that sequential execution of test cases offers nothing but a fast way to fail at test automation. A proven strategy is to embrace parallel execution as this allows multiple tests at the same time.

Buggy Test Environment

It’s often said that proper prior planning prevents poor performance. Every action in this world requires proper planning. This is even truer when it comes to test environments. If what you have is a buggy test environment, that’s already a turn-off for your test operations and a disappointment is inevitable. Therefore, you need to test on a staging environment to ensure that your code works perfectly well before proceeding to the production pipeline.

Ignoring Important Test Reports and Metrics

It’s surprising that some developers are willing to carry out a test on their product but are too much in a hurry to pay attention to critical test reports. Your guess is as good as ours, a failure of the test automation is imminent in such a scenario. Why carry out a test in the first place if the test reports will eventually get ignored? The best approach is to critically examine test reports to analyse possible faults and errors that lead to test failures. By doing this, you can address such errors and faults and make the test better on the next try. After all, the beauty of failure is the opportunity it offers you to make necessary improvement. Beyond getting a successful test result, a critical analysis of your test reports and metrics also helps you and your team to save time and resources.

Web Elements with Undefined IDs

With a non-computer vision approach to testing, it is compulsory for developers to assign IDs to web elements. Not doing this is a recipe for test failure because it becomes problematic for automated scripts to find the web elements on time. Therefore, to make sure that there is a seamless synchronization of the script, you need to assign IDs to web elements. A better way, however, is to use a test tool with computer vision and which requires no interaction with developers.

Inadequate Understanding of Test Procedure

When the testing tool being used requires human interaction, then, it becomes important for the tester to have a thorough understanding of the test procedure. Otherwise, failure is assured. When this happens, it is even costlier for companies. This is the reason why it is crucial for institutions to assign test automation to those who know how to implement it. Another issue is the inability to identify when test automation is necessary. Fortunately, there are test tools that require little or no human interaction these days especially with the success of codeless test automation tools like Testup and others.

Selecting the Best Test Automation Tool

As stated earlier, we recommend Testup as a robust test automation tool to choose for testing your product or software. Why Testup?

Succinctly put, Testup offers a brand new, computer-vision and codeless testing approach that mimics human actions. As a result, end-to-end tests become easy to maintain and highly understandable. Most test automation tools use a non-computer vision approach which means they require human interaction before they can be effectively used.

Also, code-based testing approaches like Selenium Python requires a developer to create and run the test; this in itself defeats the existence of test-automation in the first place. In addition, the approach is very expensive. Testup solves this challenge as it leverages a no-code approach to test automation.

What’s more? Unlike many test tools, Testup’s visual approach creates an easy to understand, easy to debug and easy to maintain series of actions with clear images.

Conclusion

As you have read in this article, there are great possibilities to fail at test automation if things are not done properly. As we have listed a few reasons why companies get disappointed, we have recommended a viable solution to avoid all possible pitfalls and enjoy the sumptuous benefits of test automation. To get started, check out Testup!