Forem: cgito28

A Sneak Peek into The Future of Software Testing Automation

cgito28 — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 15:53:19 +0000

Change is real and always happening; the only thing that is constant in the world. In the world of technology, change has brought a significant contribution to innovation. The everyday technology-driven tools we have today may be upgraded tomorrow. Futuristic ideas we frequently see in the sci-fi movies are now being conceptualized and developed and soon to be available in the market.

This is a similar case in the world of software testing automation. First-generation of testing automation was introduced and not long after that, second-generation tools like Selenium came into play and then there is the scriptless software test automation approach that empower testers to develop complex test cases and test scripts without any in-depth knowledge of programming or coding. This also enables the business to automate a large volume of workload and reduce the go-to-market time of the product.

This is just one of the many great advantages of scriptless test automation tools and more can be read in the article. All of this is not possible without change that triggers the magic of technology innovation. No one knows exactly what the future holds for software test automation. For that, we cannot help but anticipate what the future brings, especially in software test automation. This is why we have prepared a list of insights of possible innovation that may happen shortly, and insights that are based on the existing technology, framework, principles, and practices.

The Race for AI Testing

One of today's important breakthroughs in technology is the availability of low-level artificial intelligence the Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Microsoft’s Cortana. These low-level AIs are focused on one or more low-level tasks for instance, recognizing a voice command to play music or search something over the internet through your smartphone.

Many software companies are racing to build a full-fledged AI capable of interacting with a real human being that can mimic human actions, decisions, and thinking. It is worth noting that Google, on the other hand, is leveraging its access to billions and trillions of data across the internet. Data that they can use for their statistical model approach to improve their Google translation services on an AI scale.

The influence of AI has already made its way to the QA world. This has become a trend already as some of the software testing companies are now incorporating AI with their NLP based test automation solution.

Testsigma is among the most popular and early stage adopters of AI in test automation in its true sense. Testsigma’s AI-driven test maintenance help create stable and reliable tests faster than ever and leverage AI to speed-up the maintenance of your automated tests. It also suggest relevant tests cases that are affected with calls to action for failures.

The future of software testing is bright, with the continuous effort and with major players in the software industry to unlock the full capabilities of AI. Who knows what tomorrow brings? We are yet to find out. One thing we can be sure of is that AI will not replace testers but they will co-exist to enhance the software quality.

Shortened Life cycles

The continuous and rising demand for efficiency in governance has resulted in the adoption of several frameworks, principles, approaches, practices, and culture. This has proven to be the case over the past few decades.

Different methodologies like Scrum, Waterfall, Kanban, Extreme Programming (XP), and many more are widely used in project management. Now the demand to shorten the go-to-market time of the product arises along with the results that are based on an iterative process which is why Agile is widely being adopted. DevOps was introduced along the way, reinforcing existing methodologies. DevOps is practically a culture and practice that helps shorten life cycles whether Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) or Release Cycle.

Another approach was also introduced, the Shift-Left Testing approach which is being adopted. It is the maxim of “Test early and test often”.

Based on what is happening, fast-pacde technology innovation, plus the market competition are also on the rise – we are to expect that a different version, especially a shortened version of existing governance, methodology, approach, practices, and principles will surely be introduced to address the needs of the business. I guess we will soon find out!

The Age of Mobile Testing

The exponential growth in mobile usage and the internet has never been this big before. This is all due to digitalization that is happening all over the globe. Day to day activities of every individual is in a way influenced digitally. This is causing every business to have its product accessible to the mobile channel. This is a major shift QA as well. Testers needed to make sure the product such as web apps, webpages, and mobile native apps are mobile responsive.

Working with the mobile application and other mobile technology involves integration mostly done through Application Programming Interface (API). APIs provide interoperability between mobile platforms. Think of it this way, you can do fund transfer from your Paypal account to your local bank account – that is one of the many ways how API works.

In API integration, the test team role is to make sure that every feature is working as designed and thoroughly check the system for issues and defects that may interrupt the connection between the mobile platform. Interruption can be anything from an internet connection or could be anything related to system availability.

Major players in the industry of software test automation already noticed the trend and as their response, they have developed their Testing Automation Software to address the need for mobile app testing in addition to Web and Web services’ testing.

Testing Blockchain Application on The Rise

With the rise of blockchain, businesses from different industries are shifting to blockchain to leverage the benefit of such technology. This also means that the QA test team also needs to step up as testing blockchain application is not much of a difference in testing non-blockchain platforms. Testing such blockchain-driven technology involves additional workload, KPIs and metrics for the test team.

These additional workloads, KPIs, and metrics can be from testing the chain size of the blockchain. The longer the chain is, the more data the blockchain has – which results in high storage consumption in the datastore. In a blockchain environment, the growth of data is fast due to the nature of it having no data size limitation. There are always new blocks constantly being created.

Data integrity and data propagation must be taken into account by the QA test team. If we are working with blockchain, data save on one node should be consistent with all other nodes connected in a chain. Having a seamless data propagation means the distribution of data is forwarded properly to all nodes within the blockchain.

Another buzzword for the test team when it comes to blockchain are hashes and cryptography. These are features of blockchain to employing security within the chain. Hashes are created every time a new token is generated. A token could be any form of a transaction within the chain. The test team's role is to ensure that there are no flaws.

The continuous adoption of blockchain technology by business worldwide pave the way for more software testing of blockchain-operated systems and applications.

Leveled QA and Testing Roles

With all of those changes in technology, business adapting to change itself, and even environment levelling itself up, it is a must especially for the test team to learn how to cope up with what is happening. New skill sets may soon be required for testing. It is recommended not only for QA tester but also for someone who is inclined to technology-related jobs to stay up to date with the latest trends. Researching, cross-skilling, and even self-study to upskill yourself are always useful in times like these as we are expecting heightened testing standards and some grey area test scenarios laid out for us in the future. It doesn’t hurt to be prepared as early as now.

A sneak peek into the future of software testing automation which covers areas like AI reduced delivery lifecycles, blockchain, and mobile technology shift movement – which are the are most of the biggest trends in the world of technology. These trends factors that were seen to have a proven track record over time, of forging advancements in Software Test Automation.

Who knows what the bright future holds for us. What we can do for now is to either sit tight and yet to find out or start making a difference in shaping what's lies ahead of us.

Where Does QA and Test Automation Fit in DevOps

cgito28 — Wed, 10 Jul 2019 17:48:26 +0000

What Is DevOps?

DevOps is the combination of software development practices that combines Software Development (Dev) with Information Technology Operations (Ops) intended to speed up the development life cycle of any software application. It is critical to delivering new features and improvements, bug fixes, and updates frequently in close alignment with business objectives.

In a nutshell, DevOps practices include Agile planning, Continuous Integration, Testing, and Continuous Delivery, and of course monitoring and improving. Let us remember that DevOps is not a process or a technology or even a standard. Many businesses, software companies, and IT professionals refer to DevOps as a culture focusing on rapid delivery through the adoption of agile lean processes. DevOps heavily involves technology, technologies for building systems to be delivered and more importantly, testing automation tools for QA testing purposes.

Where Does QA and Test Automation Fit with DevOps?

DevOps plays a very important role in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), but where exactly does QA fit in continuous integration of DevOps practice?

The answer to the question is simple. QAs with their test automation activities fit in every release. They, the QA tester team, after all, are obliged to thoroughly check the product, and make sure it is well-polished and production worthy. They practically make sure that quality is ensured throughout the testing and delivery cycle and each of the testing and development groups is answerable for it.

Continuous integration and continuous delivery practices, software updates take place almost every week and it is expected of business operations to encounter problems that can be rooted mainly from being a defect in the product that pretty much affects multiple business users. This is quite a common scenario nowadays for businesses, therefore, everyone needs a quick fix especially when the product is failing.

Having a hotfix means it needs to be tested right before it is ported to production. This is where the QAs and test team comes in. This is where they need to take responsibility and accountability in evaluating and doing some assessments whether the immediate fix resolves the current issue the production is facing and most of all, the fix does not affect the functionality of any of the existing features within the application. So just as much as the Developers and Product Owners wanted to get rid of the outage by a quick fix, a Quality Analyst is needed to mitigate future outages to as much an extent as possible.

Basically, QA ties together development and operations and enables them to collaborate to have software and applications up and running. Everyone in the organization takes responsibility for quality and stability, and thereby for the success of the business.

Developers think more like a tester, and continually checks their own code for potential errors. Conversely, a tester, whose responsibility is to test the application or software using different types of testing tools & methodologies think of workarounds to fix the code. In such a scenario, organizations without a strong and definite QA and testing strategy to “continuously test” in DevOps face troubles in meeting their goals for an accelerated speed of delivery.

Give Testsigma a try! It is designed to speed up the testing process of accelerated Agile and DevOps teams. Sign up for a free trial now!

What Is the Impact of DevOps on QA?

DevOps is roughly an approach but rather it is a culture and a practice of continuous integration, continuous deployment, and continuous improvement. Multiple teams are involved and working together to work as a DevOps team, therefore it affects not only QAs but also the development team, business operations, production support, etc.

If we are solely talking about QAs, we can formulate the impact of DevOps.

One, DevOps is considered an enabler for businesses to reduce IT budget. It improves the efficiency of end-to-end delivery, runs on a lean delivery framework and it has a working end-to-end test automation framework.

Nowadays, successful businesses today are design thinking driven. The majority of them have a strong sense of urgency, aided by innovative software engineering practices. Businesses today need to have a working continuous delivery practice in place. Having one in place pretty much mandates a better outcome of product quality and speedy release. Automaton is the key to success across DevOps processes.

Delivery by co-located, integrated teams using innovative tools prevents collaboration and communication issues.

Manual errors, stove-piped communication issues are completely addressed just by having a good DevOps governance model. The model itself mandates “Fail Fast, Fail Often” which is driven by the “Test First” concept. This means that testing is a continuous process and more extensive in nature. Testing allows cohesiveness between the team of teams and the automation of everything possible. Testing is paving way for continuous improvement in the test processes being delivered via iterations. Intelligent test automation, improved regression, continuous test augmentation to name a few, are some benefits delivered by DevOps.

From a testing standpoint, DevOps addresses some of the key testing challenges. For instance, in a test environment, virtualization, automated deployment, automated build and configuration management, data refresh and maintenance becomes seamless. On the other hand, continuous Integration, automation, and verification – test first centric test-driven development, behavior-driven development concepts allow test processes to improve in a DevOps Model.

With all these, it is safe to say that as far as DevOps and Test Automation is concerned, DevOps accelerates the project delivery and life cycle of building an application. On the other hand, is designed to speed up the testing phase without compromising the quality of the product.

Having the best of both worlds, DevOps knowledge and practices along with Test Automation is promising for the success of the business. With the right team roster and an automation tool, like Testsigma, you will have your product live in the market in no time!

If you haven’t tried Testsigma yet, then you are missing out on shifting your QA team from manual testing to test automation in a jiffy. Above all, lets your QA team be a part of the automated DevOps process.

Testsigma: Your Best Yet Move Towards Test Automation For DevOps

Now if we start talking about the “perfect” QA tool that fits DevOps culture and practice, there are a few things we need to keep in mind. Factors like the iterative, automated, and incremental nature of DevOps. The QA tool must and at all cost be flexible enough to handle all the unforeseen changes during testing sessions. More importantly, it should be scalable to the extent to endure workloads during the continuous development, continuous testing, and continuous deployment phases.

What we should be looking for is a tool that completely adapts to how DevOps works. A tool that is an enabler which can empower your testing team for iterative releases. On a special note, the tool should be scalable and reliable to handle the incremental amount of code changes.

Just to summarize all this, what you need is a solution that is designed for Test Automation in DevOps.

Sure, there can be a lot of testing solution provider in the market like UFT that uses VBScript as its scripting language, then there are tools in service virtualization for Testing and many more of them that claims to be an “all-in-one testing solution” and choosing just one would be a difficult task.

Well in that case, sometimes it is best to try it for yourself. You may try Testsigma, an all in one Unified Test Automation Software for Web, Mobile apps and Web Services and one that works well for DevOps and CD.

Here are a few features Testsigma offers:

Get Started with Test Automation Ecosystem enables you to access essential elements required for test automation. No tool and setup required.
Continuous Testing for Agile and DevOps teams that uses shift-left approach, incorporates Continuous Integration and Continuous Development, provide fast feedback to accelerate the delivery of web & mobile apps.
Super-Fast Test Development Using Simple English lets everyone write automated tests at least 5 times faster using plain English. No coding skills required.
Fully Loaded Test Lab on Cloud to Run Tests which offers over a thousand Operating System/Brower/Version combos and two thousand plus real mobile devices to run significant amount of tests in minutes.
Parallel Test Execution to Save Time and Cost because of scalable test environments and parallel test executions to run thousands of tests in minutes for faster feedback.
AI to Reduce Maintenance Efforts and Improve Productivity by saving test maintenance time by 70%. AI also helps identifies affected and potential failures upfront to save execution time and costs.

With all these being said, it is best to say that Testsigma is built for QA teams to automate testing in DevOps. So, what are you waiting for? Don’t be left behind. Sign up now for a free 30 days’ trial!

For more information, visit Testsigma Official Website.

Agile Automation Testing in SAFe

cgito28 — Fri, 05 Jul 2019 22:10:26 +0000

Agile Automation Testing In SAFe

Testsigma undertook the work of providing customers with the best experience in using their automation testing solution. What makes this test automation suite competitive from the other vendors in the market is that it is scriptless(NLP based), maintained by AI, and can be hosted either on-premise also on the cloud.

What also sets Testsigma apart from the rest is, they built their solution to address all the testing-related concerns of every business, whether small or medium business to even an enterprise.

One of the major reasons why customers prefer Testsigma is the product’s capability to scale to the extent of catering volumes of the workload for the largest organization especially for those organizations that adopt Agile and DevOps methodologies.

Agile adoption is now a trend to many businesses which means that the playing field of software testing has been leveled.

What Is Agile Testing?

Agile based testing is a process that is intended to perform a quality check on an application or software that follows the principle of agile software development. In traditional development, typically it uses a “big-bang” deferred testing approach, while agile testing develops and test systems in small increments, often developing tests before writing the code, story, or feature.

With this approach, the test itself helps to elaborate and clearly define the intended system behavior, even before the system is implemented. In other words, quality is established at an early stage. Pretty much like agile development, agile testing is a collaborative, team-oriented process where everyone shares the responsibility of testing the software.

Yes, you have read it right! Everyone has to do their fair share in agile testing and that is to test the software! This it is often referred to as “teams-of-team”.

Agile testing comes with a “test-first” approach that practically applies to all types of agile work such as defining software capabilities and its features, outlining the non-functional requirements, creating user’s stories based on client’s specification and requirements and as well as coding. It can also be applied to the hardware components of the application. This is the same way tests are written during the coding or development stage, acceptance tests for capabilities and user stories and features are there to clearly define the output. Also, the right timing of clearly defining the proposed system behavior by the way also mitigates the need for overly detailed requirement specifications and sign-offs.

Unlike conventionally-written requirements, these test cases are automated wherever possible. Even if they weren’t, they still provide a clear definition of what the system does, rather than an idea or statement of early thoughts of what it was supposed to do.

Start your Agile Testing today with Testsigma. Automate your testing right from day one. No coding skills required!

VUCA World: Reason Why Companies Opt for Agile Testing

Today, most of the business adopt agile mainly to addresses all possible scenario of the VUCA world. But what is VUCA World?

First of all, VUCA stands for Volatility – Uncertainty – Complexity – Ambiguity.

Volatile change in environments is constant. It is usually masked by rapid, unexpected and significant changes with tentative duration. Uncertainty is a component of some instances, with a lack of clarity and making the outcome unpredictable. Complexity is a manifestation of the multiplicity of interconnected factors, and the nature of it can be quite difficult for us to process and at times, it puts limit for control. Ambiguity brings along an environment that has everything in it, are hard to decipher with mixed messages and many are unknown unknowns.

These are just some of the high-level details of what most businesses are dealing with in today’s world.

This is why it is a good move for a business to start practicing Agile as a culture. Adopting agile means you are shifting towards DevOps and it means that testing is happening and more people are getting involved in it.

With this enterprise level of testing, it is critical for everyone involved in agile testing to know their role and scope!

Know Your Role in SAFe

In a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), testing at an enterprise level means we are involving professionals from several departments. From portfolio management to program management and the team itself that primarily composed of software developers alongside the QA test team.

With so many participants, it is for a must not only for you but for everyone else to know which role to play for the project to succeed.

For you to have a clear insight into this discussion, I am sharing the three-layer organizational abstract from Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). This is how a typical agile organization looks like.

Image Credit: Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) Website

The Team Layer are teams of software developers and testers closely working together to create a product from selected user stories, strictly governed and prioritized by the Product Owner with the scrum master who makes sure that agile practices are in place.

The Program and Large Solution Layer is mostly a team of Architects and Program Manager who is responsible for demonstrating a working software at the end of each sprint cycle. The are also teams from the IT infrastructure department who provisions platforms for continuous integration, development and staging, and as well as for end-to-end testing.

The Portfolio Layer is the stakeholder group. Stakeholders are executives that make sure that the program is aligned to the enterprise’s business strategy and model.

Now just to weed out the “devils in the detail”. Here is a more detailed breakdown of roles involved in such enterprise activity.

Testers are the ones who are closely working with the product owner to add and refine the done “criteria” for user stories. They are not only responsible for developing test scripts but they are also accountable for creating frameworks for manual and automated testing. In a nutshell, they always do a benchmark of the system and find flaws within it. If there are defects then they are expected to work with developers directly to create a solution and validate them.

System Team Testers – This team is the one who develops the platform for testing and frameworks that empower the team that makes up the Agile release train. Creating and running automated tests to enable continuous integration and continuous deployment falls within their bucket too. They also provide provisioning of network and virtualization that allows the test team to test and develop independently of one another. Most importantly, they are the ones who conduct audit and testing of cross-system topics like Single Sign-On (SSO), security, compliance and regulatory standards which may or may not fall to being the QA test team “out-of-scope support”.

Then we have the “Other Actors” from the user management team, user experience experts and several other architects who play as backup and support roles in such activity.

Test Architects are those who define testing strategies, framework, and methodologies, and work hand in hand with System Architects in ensuring that the product application is designed for quality testing.

Automation Architects lead the analysis and proof of concept activities when it comes to automation testing. This is to ensure that consistency for build verification tests and regression test suite are in automation is in place. Overall, they are engaged in everything that has something to do with automation such as preparing the test cases, setup specifications and configurations, the staging of test cases and its data.

System Architects are not involved in testing directly, but they are the ones who design the system to cater to overall testing sessions and workloads.

UX Experts is team of user experience experts who are deeply involved UX testing, and providing inputs as to what approach is needed for usability testing and test automation method.

Business Analysts provide support to the agile and system teams in developing and executing end-to-end testing. They also provide recommendations on functional and non-functional requirements, and Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

Product Owners at times typically involve in testing and ad hoc testing.

Additionally, in an agile or system team, testers are becoming a part of virtual teams and are commonly referred to like the Communities of Practices (CoPs). CoPs are comprised of people from different teams and departments having common expertise and knowledge. They come together as one and participate in activities to share their expertise and experiences.

Testing in an Agile enterprise, everyone is accountable for quality which makes everyone a tester regardless of their levels within the organization. Therefore, other enterprise businesses opt for cross-skilled resources. For instance, developer-tester role, an individual dedicated to programming as well as testing.

Now that you have the bigger picture of Agile Testing, what role do you play in? How is your agile culture within your organization different from this?

How to Best Automate Regression Testing Effectively

cgito28 — Thu, 04 Jul 2019 17:06:54 +0000

How to Best Automate Regression Testing Effectively

One of the most popular topics in Automated Testing today is Regression Testing. What is it exactly?

The word “Regression” means “the act of going back”. When applied in Automated Testing, the testing teams needed to conduct tests repeatedly on previous or existing application versions. This test is called Regression Testing and it is performed to make sure that previously working functionality still works after changes elsewhere in the system. These changes can be software patches for new updates or versions or it can be a new functionality development, an integration of third-party components, and so on.

This is why the regression test is critical for businesses to keep a close eye on as it makes sure that said changes have not adversely affected the existing features.

Things to Consider while Automating Regression Testing

There are a lot of factors to consider especially if we are to automate our regression testing. Factors like strategy and approach, the framework, methodologies, timeline, resources and manpower, challenges, and the right tools to conduct software testing and test automation. All these are necessary to facilitate successful test automation.

To start, we need to look at our approach in taking up regression testing. Teams involved should have a clear understanding of the business objectives of regression testing and why we need to automate it. All participants must be aware of the framework they will be using and the methodologies they will be practising within the testing duration.

The Test Leads should carefully plan everything from the resources and manpower estimation to procuring the right automated testing tools to make it possible. Having a well-defined strategy with a list of objectives and reasons for automated testing sets the target, metrics, and KPIs for the test team, functional users and the business itself.

It is also important for you to be aware of the challenges and blockers the test team may face before and during the regression testing process. The anticipation of the challenges is one way of putting up a mitigation plan should the test team encounter a roadblock. We can identify a lot of challenges when we talk about regression testing but the most critical ones include the time consumption, complexity, and the cost to the business.

Regression testing is a time-consuming process as it often involves running an existing test over and again. Given its repetitive nature, the tester team may find this overly unenthusiastic. Complexity is another thing to consider. Every time a product gets updated, they can grow quite complex which only adds up to your regression pack.

Regression testing keeps the product from breaking apart after some changes are implemented and ensure that the existing features are in a functional state. Communicating the Business Value of regression testing to the involved stakeholders can be a complex task too to do especially if they are not technically related. They may not be looking for the product to grow and move forward and may not be looking to make a considerable time investment to extend timelines and this can be a hard sell.

Let us not forget the need to look for an automated testing solution. The solution that pretty much lets you automate regression testing for web applications and services, mobile apps, database, software, and Application Programming Interfaces(APIs). It is critical for the business to have the right platform to automate the regression testing.

Perhaps, you can try Testsigma? A Unified Automated Testing Platform that can identify relevant affected test cases of your Automated Regression Testing.

The Must-Have Features of Automated Regression Testing Tools

Choosing the right automated testing tool to use for your automated regression testing automation could be difficult. There are a plethora of tools available to choose from that claims to offer a “full-fledged” suite for regression testing automation.

Here are some major points to look out for while choosing the right Automated Regression Testing solution.

Easy Modifications

It is a must that the tool you are using makes editing easy. The problem with Record and Playback tools is the amount of rework required. The editing and debugging of functional test scripts is burdensome.

NLP based Automated Testing Tool, Testsigma allows for easy editing of complex test cases with a script-free yet easy method of editing if required. The AI suggests relevant affected test cases and workarounds to fix them. You might need to look for an Automated Regression Testing Tool that allows for easy modifictaions if need be.

Reusable Test Steps

It is only logical to have the said features recorded so when the time comes you need to reuse the record assets; it is easily available for the test team to use with minimal editing required.

Script-less

With the advancement and innovation of technology, script-less test automation has come into play. The solution provides ready-to-use automated test cases and reusable code objects. The problem of coding is largely taken care of by the script-less test automation tool already.

In terms of debugging test scripts, script-less test automation tools eliminate the need to repeatedly debug scripted test code as this already done by the tool itself

Most of all, script-less can easily automate the bulk load of test cases faster almost double the time faster to conventional test automation.

Server-Level Continuous Integration

It is likely to have a team of testers who are involved during the testing session, therefore it is recommended to have the test scripts saved on the server and have it executed there. Automating the process of storing and executing the test scripts on the server-level increases the turnaround time of the whole automated regression testing process.

There are many leading continuous integration tools available like Jenkins, Bamboo, JetBrains, etc., that you may want to integrate with your application automation testing tools. If these tools come as plugins with your automated testing tools, it would be very effective to maintain the test scripts.

It is important that the automated regression testing tool integrates with Continuous Integration (CI)/CD tools that will help to verify your application on regression cycles.

Reuses Methodologies

Every tester practice reusing test cases when needed especially if there are similar scenarios from other projects or probably for succeeding regression cycles. The tool we use to automate the regression testing process should have some kind of methodology where we can combine the various successful reusable test cases to use the successful test cases over and again, and also whenever there are similar kinds of automated regression testing requirements.

The benefit of having the tool combined with methodologies reduces the time required to always test a similar kind of scenario with just a few reusable test cases. The combination of re-usable test cases can sometimes help in the complete regression testing cycles. Also, these methodologies can be saved for future regression testing requirements.

Regression Report Generation Made Easy

Reporting functionalities and capabilities are required and are a must-have for the automated regression testing tool. Test Leads can generate a report with ease. These reports will be used to measure target, KPIs, failure, and success of a particular test case. This is also useful in conducting thorough-checks and audits if applications are being tested appropriately with the newly developed or re-usable regression test cases.

Backtracking these things is only possible using reporting capability. The tool itself should have this feature to monitor and review the complete information of the test cases; information such as the number of tests executed, test case status, log files, priorities, the ability to capture the screens, etc.

It is beneficial for the automated regression testing tool to have visual reports to compliment to document the bugs and defects easily. A detailed view can help testers make any changes in the test cases if required and easily communicate an issue with the developer and the entire team.

With all those major points to consider, it is now easier for the business to select the right tool for their testing. Perhaps, if you are looking at a Regression Testing Automation Suite that is flexible, scalable and innovative, then Testsigma is the right one for you with screenshots and videos and error logs!

Testsigma: Why is it a perfect fit for Automated Regression Testing

Testsigma is a cloud-based Test Automation Ecosystem with all the essential elements required for automated regression testing.

Here are the few of what they can bring in to your plate:

Automate Regression Tests Using Simple English
A Simplified approach that lets everyone participate in automating regression testing.
AI Creates Regression Test Plan With Affected Tests
Automated Regression Tests That Auto Heal
Reduces Feedback Time – Execute Multiple Tests In Parallel
Continuous Integration To Run tests After Every New Build
Comprehensive Reports to Determine Release Readiness

Testing made easy.

You can get started with Automated Regression Testing instantly with Testsigma with absolutely no programming knowledge is required.

For more details regarding the Automated Regression Testing Tool , sign up for a free trial !

Selenium vs Scriptless Test Automation

cgito28 — Sat, 08 Jun 2019 12:04:44 +0000

Software Testing has not evolved to meet the demands of the current accelerated delivery needs. As software becomes sophisticated, traditional approaches to Testing would not be sufficient. With the advancement in technology, Test Automation was introduced to accelerate the process of testing simply by automating test cases and scenarios.

In today’s world, almost every organization is onto Test Automation for better business results.

For the past few years, the First generation of Test Automation has been in the spotlight. These provide businesses and testing teams a macro recording which runs in parallel with an Application Programming Interface (API), whereas test execution engines send a command and wait for it to be executed. This tool was working well for short length automation and was also done by combining a logical sequence of such short length macros and test flows.

Then came the Second generation Test Automation Tools that offers full scripting capability with more features and better support for user interaction. Most of the windows based on common tasks such as operations, application, launch, generating reports were simplified. Frameworks like these are required to be built on long term test automation to go at par with quality the business is expecting.

As the continuous innovation in technology, Scriptless Test Automation is rapidly gaining its popularity amongst various IT companies – simply because it is designed to help the testing team to quickly build ready-to-use automated test cases and reusable code assets that have full test coverage.

Second-Gen Test Automation Tool, “Selenium”

Selenium is a suite of web browser automation tools to automate browsers across a range of platforms. It is principally used to automate web apps for testing reasons even though it is capable of so many things. The majority of big-name browser vendors support it. Furthermore, many of these either have taken or are taking steps to make it a native part of their browsers. Besides, it is the core technology used in serried of other APIs, browser automation tools, and automation testing frameworks.

Selenium runs on various browsers and operating systems, and a range of programming languages and frameworks can control it. Plus, it can automate tedious web-based administration tasks.

It also provides for authoring tests without the necessity to acquire knowledge of a test scripting language (Selenium IDE). Selenium also provides a test domain-specific language (Selenese) to write tests in several popular programming languages, including Scala, Groovy, Java, Ruby, C#, PHP, Python, and Perl. The tests can then run against current and newest web browsers. Selenium deploys on Windows, macOS and Linux platforms.

Selenium is primarily composed of respective components with specific role assists the web application test automation development. These are Selenium Grid, Selenium IDE (Integrated Development Environment), Selenium WebDriver, and Selenium RC (Remote Control).

Scriptless Test Automation Tools: A “Less to Zero Coding” for QA Professionals

“Scriptless” implies “no scripting and programming”. This is somewhat misleading to the audience especially to those who are new to software testing. Scriptless testing doesn’t eliminate scripting and is not suitable for the actual coding of any test automation tool. It is an extremely flexible testing framework with minimal exposure to code. In layman’s terms, it can be said that scriptless testing is an approach to conduct testing without scripting or coding in any programming language. It reduces the time required for creating automated tests by considerably minimizing the amount of scripting needed.

Scriptless Test Automation is a more structured model where the majority of test cases can be automated by functional users and those are reusable scripts. It is a myth that test architects will be involved in scriptless testing but in real-time they are not. Based on their expertise and knowledge, test architects will be involved in identifying the possible reusable part of the test scripts. When operational scope spreads out, few new components will be added to the application and then test architects will be involved to integrate them.

Scriptless Test Automation is being refined to highly organized tools for use in multiple real-time test scenarios. The developers of those tools shall have analyzed various business cases, deployment environments, operational scenarios before building each reusable components for their tools. Hence they offer a good standard of practical reliability as well.

With scriptless Test Automation, testers can create better automation scripts that showcase the core functionality of the application. This type of testing will certainly reduce the number of licenses for the testing tools. Scriptless Test Automation will be more useful from product development companies where the same resources can be leveraged for multiple tasks.

Thought it has many advantages, there are scriptless test automation frameworks that have complex underlying codes that need to be maintained and updated periodically. Those frameworks are not free – they consume initial and maintenance costs which is more than the tool’s cost. Therefore, choosing the right framework specific to your business requirement is the only manual effort you need to do.

Using Scriptless Test Automation tools, the testing team does not need any coding or scripting knowledge to create automated tests. However, as a framework, it is a good practice to provide the capability of customization.

For advanced users, customization can be done by writing their code for covering some unique test scenarios.

Selenium Vs Scriptless Test Automation Tool: What is Best?

Selenium is required to be built on long term test automation to go at par with quality. For instance, if the testing team wanted to reuse test scripts then it is best to leverage Selenium IDE. Selenium IDE is one of the components of Selenium capable of recording, editing and debugging of functional test scripts. Test scripts have to be made from scratch by the testers, therefore, they are required to know programming or scripting.

On the other hand, Scriptless Automation Tools already provide ready-to-use automated test cases and reusable code objects. Mostly for Scriptless Test Automation tools, these features are out-of-the-box. It is not mandatory for the testers to know programming or scripting of some sort. It empowers testers and business users to automate testers without worrying about coding. The problem of coding is largely taken care of by the Scriptless Test Automation tool already.

In terms of debugging test scripts, Scriptless Test Automation tools eliminate the need to repeatedly debug scripted test code as this already done by the tool itself, while in Selenium, automation testers when encountering any test script errors have to debug the test code manually.

Setting up test environments for Selenium is difficult. Selenium uses various plugins to support Test Automation thus making it a must for system owners and administrators to update and configure everything manually. Scriptless test environments can be built faster and maintained easily creating a hassle-free update environment.

Hence, making a Scriptless Test Automation tool a perfect fit for Test Automation for Agile and DevOps.

Using Scriptless Test Automation Tool, the testing team can easily automate large test suites faster almost double the times faster compared to Selenium. It greatly reduces the “go to market” time, which comes in handy when there are major software updates. In short, the more the test coverage, the better as it produces a well-refined product which is a win-win situation for the business.

Scalability and Flexibility is one of the most desirable in Scriptless. It is flexible to work with various browsers available in the market and it scales an amount of workload as much as the business requires. For Selenium to be flexible enough to work with multiple browsers, it needs to have components

The Comparison Battle Concludes!

It’s time to reach our conclusion. Both contenders, Selenium and Scriptless Test Automation Tools do what they do best. Now, which is better?

Overall, Scriptless Test Automation Tools have an edge over Selenium. Scriptless test automation tools can easily be set up, configured and maintained and does not require any plugins as Selenium does. It can handle the bulk amount of test cases way faster than Selenium.

Scriptless Test Automation Tools do not require that their functional users know scripting and programming. Users can conduct their QA activities with “ready-to-use” test steps which already exist within the platform.

Unlike Selenium, one needs to add Selenium IDE to leverage playback tool which grants users feature slightly similar with reusable codes scriptless has. If we talk about scalability and flexibility, scriptless is the one in favor. Everything you need is already available. Selenium, for the most part, requires components to utilize and fully leverage it.

The battle is over. If you are looking for the perfect Automation Testing Suite and a complete solution fit for Agile and DevOps environments, then a Scriptless Automation Tool is definitely for you.

Testsigma: NLP based Scriptless Test Automation Solution

When we start talking about Test Automation, we can create a list of issues every business is facing and some which are critical for the business. Some of the major pain points include the usage of multiple tools required in testing sessions, rigorous scripting and coding, test automation frameworks, test lab, integrations and other QA related concerns that need to be addressed. Even with all these, your testing team is all over the place.

It’s time to say goodbye to all this.

Say hello to Testsigma, a complete Test Automation ecosystem!
Testsigma is an NLP based Scriptless Test Automation tool meant for all! The tests are written in simple English and can automate Web, Mobile apps and API services.
To learn more about the tool, the product and services, reach out to the chat section or visit Testsigma’s home page.

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