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Building Maintainable and Scalable Test Automation
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Building Maintainable and Scalable Test Automation

There is an increased demand for Test Automation strategy because software teams across the globe are encouraged to fail fast, learn fast and deliver faster. Unlike the waterfall methods, software development process today starts with writing test cases for the requirements. Test Automation became an indispensable asset to fuel Continuous Integration gears. Let’s list down questions we need to ask ourselves to know if we have a good Test Automation strategy.

  • Are the test scripts separated from the input data so that changes in input values doesn’t impact the test scripts?
  • Is it maintaining a library for all the reusable components?
  • Are the coding standards set high throughout the framework to encourage code uniformity?
  • Can we add new application features and enhancements with minimal effort?
  • Is there a versioning tool connected to keep track of the framework changes?

Most importantly,

  • You are automating your test cases with good coverage but is that maintainable and scalable Test Automation?

Quality Engineering became the core of Digital Transformation. Test Automation improves efficiency, speed, and coverage of software testing but, when an application is scaling, the testing approaches should scale too!


Is it as simple as it sounds? Definitely not. Identifying, designing, planning, and executing tens of test cases monthly is very different from dealing with thousands of them weekly. Automating repetitive functional and non-functional test cases would seem to save time and efforts but it can go wrong in more than one way as the project grows bigger. First things first! When is it called scalable Test Automation strategy?

Scalability            /ˌskeɪləˈbɪləti/

The capacity to be able to change in size to suit the requirements and limitations

Scalable Test Automation is

  • Easy to create/edit – Requires minimal to no technical expertise
  • Quick to run – Compared to human testers since it runs all test parallelly
  • Easy to Maintain – with version control, repositories, and bug identification etc.
  • Repeatable and Reliable – Can escape false positive, false negatives, and user misinterpretations
  • Cost Efficient – Higher coverage, lesser bugs, faster results, the list goes on

The World Quality Report (2021-22) published by a multi-national tech consulting corporation listed down the benefits of Test Automation as per the survey results from the 1700+ practitioners worldwide. The report says, an efficient and scalable test automation strategy uses AI/ML for dynamic scope selection, detects bugs and code backlogs, improves test coverage, offers better control and transparency over testing activities, while reducing test cycles, security concerns, and risks.

But these benefits are not granted for every team that has a Test Automation strategy in place. Here are the reasons why Test Automation Frameworks sometimes do not yield desired results.

  • Frameworks not matching the pace of development

As low-code and no-code automation tools are still in emerging state, most of the automation framework executions are code-based. In the age of CI-CD, developers are producing new code continuously and matching their pace to change the testing framework and still ensure a solid foundation could be difficult. All the while, the instant short-term fixes testers tend to do on the frameworks would mess with the efficiency of test cases entirely in a long run.

benefits of test automation

  • Script-based test automation is demanding

When automation frameworks require development and maintenance, you’d need programmers who specialize in automation which are hard to find and when you do, they are costly. So, it is either a costly addition of programmers or a hopeful reliance on technical testers that they’ll pull it off over time.

  • Lack of understanding about the application

Writing test automation frameworks require in-and-out knowledge about the application in making. Otherwise, missing a tiniest detail like the programming language used to build it can create interruptions in third-party controls and supporting browsers, which will eventually influence the test results. The two common mistakes organizations do while implementing test automation are – keeping it a person-centric and failing to give necessary KT to testing team.

  • Knowing what to automate and how to

Not everything we test can be automated. Jump starting into automating test cases without outlining the scope of automation will give you unwanted surprises down the road. It is practically waste of time to try and automate test cases that are unique or be used once/twice. Whether you build it or source it, automation frameworks are often intended to support just specific part(s) of the project.

The same framework can’t be used for every application your organization is building, which often leads to a question ‘Is it worth spending time, money and resources on?’.

Qentelli has demonstrated and verifiable history of automating the testing efforts of organizations whose applications has multifold of features and modules.

Condensing what we’ve learnt over years, these are some of the best practices that lets a test automation strategy scale directly proportionate to the application’s size and complexity.

Executive Sponsor Support

There are way too many software bots and tools to dazzle your automation dreams but organizational buy-in is the most important step for transformation engagement. Define business objectives, technological possibilities and your ideal scalable automation strategy lies in the intersection of both. A solid executive sponsor support can help any business initiative reach its potential and safeguard its continuance as it grows.

The Roadmap

Never be too confident to ignore sketching down a clear automation roadmap. There are many tools, APIs, and methodologies to automate your test cases, but nothing can save you from failure if you don’t know what to automate, how to automate and what not to automate. Have a clear picture of the application in making, list of functionalities, features, expected behaviors, supported browsers, environments, and threats.

Ask yourself:

Do you know how the application is going to be evolved in the next 2 years?

Do you know if there is going to be any changes in the application’s tech stack in the next 1 year?

What technologies your organization is going to adopt in the next 2 years?

Test Automation Flows

Approach your testing suite with automation mindset. Transferring automation test cases 1:1 manner isn’t very scalable. Instead consider a way to create more atomic flows. Always remember to isolate your automation flows, independent with each other. In critical cases, it saves the day when regular troubleshooting fails. It’s not to discourage you from creating end-to-end tests that covers the whole process, but the isolated ones are easier to track and diagnose where the problem is when something doesn’t seem right.

Another important part of it is to create re-usable test automation flows that can handle specific features. These are easier to scale compared to the flows that have more than one dimension. While you create re-usable automation flows, don’t overlook the importance of naming conventions. The test flows should be easily found by rest of the team.

Build an operating model

Implementation of a scalable test automation model involves larger number of people than you’d expect. The stakeholders and dependencies go beyond a small team of RPA professionals and testers. As you plan to scale the automation model, building a center of excellence is beneficial in order to design (and redesign), deploy, scale, and transform it throughout the software development cycle. An ideal TA center of excellence consists of:

A subject matter expertise to define and rescue

An IT team that takes bots into production

An internal audit team that monitors security

The risk and control team that guides and governs the approval processes

An Executive Sponsor that measures ROI

Justify the investments with ROI aka Value creation

‘What are we spending? And What are we saving?’ are the two most common questions to hear after every new org-wide technology implementation proposal. But remember something.

RPA works best when you use it to improve value and not only to reducing costs.

The adoption of robots in each organization is unique and they go through a painfully slow and expensive process before they do their magic. So, focusing on identifying areas that can improve the value creation should happen sooner. As cliched as it may sound, the ‘Value’ need not be monetized always. Here are some of the elements that can be benefitted with automation.

Cost optimization

Cost Optimization

Employee Experience

Employee Experience

Customer Experience

Customer Experience

Compliance and Regulatory Governance

Compliance and Regulatory Governance

IT Automation readiness

Another common mistake by organizations is having a test automation strategy but not involving IT and Ops teams from earlier stages of SDLC. The decision of introducing automation, testing its efficiency, and pitching it to business users can happen behind curtains but when it’s time to scale, the sooner you involve your IT the better. Ensure that your IT can monitor Test Automation framework deployments, provide high-availability, disaster-recovery support, and integrate with the rest of the environment.

Finding the right tool

Although it is almost the bottom of the list, it is most certainly one of the crucial steps to follow in order to draft maintainable and scalable test automation strategy. Don’t be in a hurry to select your testing companion but consider these three elements before taking a decision.

Level of code – is it No code? Low code? Or Code-based?

CI-CD Pipeline Integration – Does it go along well with the investments you’ve already made?

Reusability – Does the tool encourage you to reuse the flows, name them with ease and lets you overview the whole testing environment?

For over two decades, many software testing tool vendors are offering their services to aid enterprises to release quality software that supports their business. But today, it is high time to realize that:

  • If your testing software is legacy, it is most likely not effective on the new-age application you are building
  • Opting for script-based Test Automation tools without in-house automation expertise will be cumbersome to maintain and scale
  • The software architectures, development processes, definition of ‘Quality’, everything is changing

To summarize everything above,

test-automation-tool-compare

Open-source Test Automation tools are ruling the market but there are pros and cons for both. Scalability and maintainability are not things that you can ‘figure out later’. So, ensure there is a scalable Test Automation strategy and remember everything we discussed above before you sign up for a tool.

Wondering how can you draft a result-oriented and cost-effective Test Automation strategy that is easy to scale and maintain? Let’s have a quick chat.