Five Ways to Make Test Automation Fail

Test automation or what is also known as automation is basically the process of getting a software program tested by another computer or rather another program that can be referred to as the automation tool. Automation testing is a preferred strategy for most entrepreneurs and this is certainly because of the several benefits offered by the process. Successful execution of the automated tests leads to better quality, higher productivity and most importantly, much lower costs. However, the process often fails while the objectives are also not accomplished in a majority of situations. Now, the failure of the tests owes to certain reasons that also include the wrong perceptions of the QA managers.

Signs of Failure

Prior to delving deeper into the five prominent causes behind the failure of these particular tests, let us understand the signs of the failure of the same. One of the main intentions behind carrying out the tests is to satisfy the stakeholders and take them into confidence. When the stakeholders are not happy with the results and the entrepreneurs prefer manual testing over automation, one can assume that the process has failed. A demoralized team of professionals also paves the way for the failure of the tests and is therefore, extremely undesirable.

A Few Wrong Perceptions

Automation testing fails as a result of certain wrong perceptions. People often assume that the process can be a solution to most problems including that of shortage of time or scarcity of resources. This is a completely wrong idea just as the concept of automated testing as a substitute for testing that is not so improved is also inaccurate.

Quite similarly, while many consider the procedure to be effective in reducing costs, it is not actually so. Neither is the concept of automated testing all about regression nor is it meant to eliminate the chaos in testing. One must have his concepts or ideas about test automation in order to engage in the right use of the procedure.

Five Causes behind the Failure of Test Automation

1. Choosing the Apparently Most Powerful Tools: When it comes to automated testing, even the most powerful tools are not the best ones. In fact, the choice of the tools should be based on factors like budget, the technology behind the application, the skills of the engineer and so on. Once chosen, you must make sure that the tool meets your specific expectations. Going after the powerful tool without considering the necessary factors would lead to a failure of the procedure.

2. Not Realizing the Significance of a Standard or Framework: The implementation of the testing process necessitates a certain standard or framework. Many organizations fail to realize that and hence, do not spend the required time on building a framework. The professionals work in an aimless manner and this too, exercises a negative effect on the same.

3. Considering It to Be a Part Time Project: Automation testing is often mistaken for a part time project that can be operated parallely with any other development projects. Actually, testing itself is an independent project while the main projects are partially dependent on it.

4. Attempting at Automating 100% Regressions: Trying to automate 100% regressions even with the best team and the tools is a difficult proposition. Basically, the process is a long- term one in which the resources have to be analyzed thoroughly to achieve the desired goals.

5. Considering that the Process is Easy: Like any other process, the procedure of automation testing can be quite complicated and it can actually necessitate a lot of skills as well as professional expertise. Assuming that it is rather easy and straightforward leads to an obvious failure of the same.

Test automation can be of immense significance provided that one gets rid of the wrong notions and engages in a proper implementation of the process. And that’s when you would need to hire automation testers and manual testers who are certified and benchmarked by the industry.

We provide software automation testing services. If you would like to get your application tested by our certified software testers, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.

Maximizing The Utilization Of Test Automation

Test automation is turning out to be a very popular and preferred procedure or activity these days. Effective automated testing guarantees better implementation of the different types of software programs. Consequently, increasing the usability of the test automation process has become a concern and it is for this reason that business entrepreneurs are actually looking for ways to maximize the utilization of the automated testing procedure.

Advantages of the Method

Prior to looking into the aspects of maximizing the utilization of test automation, let us consider some of the prominent benefits of the testing process. Automation tests lead to faster processes, which in turn, implies that larger amounts of data are tested in much less time. The quality is also improved to a significant extent. As the name suggests, automated testing is meant to cut down the manpower required in the accomplishment of certain objectives and therefore, it is highly preferred by industries. What's more, detection of different types of defects becomes much easier and hassle- free.

Maximizing Utilization and Increasing Profits

Automated tests bring about a whole range of benefits that include test cycles that are significantly accelerated, have a better coverage, almost facilitates accurate reporting and most importantly, much higher level of productivity.

A survey of certain enterprises that are in favour of this process reveals that the same has lowered down the cost of testing by not less than 30%. At the same time, the acceleration time to market has been increased by more than 50% and all this has been owing to the successful implementation of some of the best automation strategies.

Having said that, the failure to devise the right strategies or implementing them in the right direction leads not only to the project failure but also the failure in deriving the pre- calculated returns on investment from the process. This situation is extremely undesirable for any organization for this paves the way for neither any improved efficiencies nor a proper utilization of resources.

Considering this, it can be said that the way in which the procedure is utilized depends largely on the strategies that are put to use. Now, the creation of strategies can be carried out through the following steps:

• Building up a proper practical guide for the development of successful automation strategies. The guide must also contain information about the allocation of resources and spending of the budget.
• Organizing case studies that delineate the strategies to be applied in choosing the automation frameworks, the end to end scenarios, approaches to implementation as well as test data.
• Defining the metrics and determining the ways of capturing them to ensure that the strategies are actually working in the way these are supposed to work.

In the present years when the product life cycles are constantly on the rise and the cost pressures are restricted, the conventional approaches to testing proves to be rather ineffective. The urge to utilize test automation all the more has led to the framework driven tests. This particular procedure leads to much reduced testing cycle times, most importantly regressions. Both costs as well as efforts are reduced to a considerable extent. Iterative development is facilitated while the releases turn out to be much more frequent than earlier.

Several enterprises are experimenting with this framework- based process to determine if it actually implies the better utilization of test automation as a whole. The results have been positive enough to make them move in this direction with conviction. The better the process is implemented, the more productive will be the end results. The success rate of the accomplishment of the enterprise objectives will also increase. You can hire testers from top automation testing providers in India who can test your projects within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide software automation testing services. If you would like to get your application tested by our certified automation testers, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.

Advantage of Conducting Automated Software Testing

With more and more companies launching new applications to target the expanding software market, the software development projects are becoming more complex and complicated. At the same time, the software developers have to work consistently in improving the user experience by fixing a variety of bugs, errors, mistakes and functions. Also, the software must perform smoothly in different environments to become successful. So, companies deploy the most effective software testing techniques to save time, money and effort.

The method of software testing also varies based on the nature and size of the project. Each company also has options to choose from a number of manual and automated software testing methods. But the automated web testing methods are hugely popular due to their flexible and easy-to-use nature. A software testing professional can use a set of flexible tools to run a testing script to accurately emulate the behavior of end-users.

You can even consider automating specific manual testing processes to avail several advantages. Based on the design and type of the software, you can use specialized tools to carry out functional, regression, stress, and exception or negative testing. Also, the tools can be used to ensure that the software performs smoothly under different circumstances and conditions. You can even decide the hardware or software that needs to be upgraded to improve the performance of the software.

Significant Advantage of Conducting Automated Software Testing

Easy to Perform Certain Test Repeatedly: Software testing professionals often have to administer certain tests repeatedly to cover all bases. The complex nature of the project will require the testers to put a huge amount of test and efforts to perform the tests again and again manually. Further, the manual test will make it difficult for testers to find the glitches and bugs in the application. Most software testing tools allow testers to configure the tests once based on certain parameters, and use the configuration to administer the test over and over without putting any extra effort.

Smooth Running of Loads of Tests and Cases: Nowadays, most software application projects are divided into different modules. So a large project will require the testing professionals to test the application on a regression basis. The automated test scripts also have to be written from the scratch by keeping in mind a large number of tests or cases that will run and rerun consistently. As the running and rerunning of test scripts manually needs a huge amount of time, it may prolong the project completion date. So many testers use testing tools to easily execute the test scripts till they are sure about the accuracy of test results.

Saves Your Time and Resources: Most companies, nowadays, deploy a team of software testing professional to make the project a success. So you have to invest more time and resources to test a software application thoroughly. But you can always save both time and resources by automating the testing process. As the test scripts can be reused to target several user interfaces, and the tests can be administered in less time, you can easily develop a quality application, while saving funds. Also, the automated testing tools can save you money by reducing the resources needed to conduct regression tests.

Make Your Software more Reliable: With companies upgrading their applications regularly, it has become essential for you to ensure that your software is 100% error-free. Also, you need to develop an application that can run smoothly on major web browsers, operating systems and devices. You can choose from several software testing tools to suit the nature of your application. Each testing tool further allows you to build a suite of test to cover all features and functionality of the application. The comprehensive testing can emulate user behavior accurately that will contribute toward boosting the efficiency, performance and reliability of the application.

Reusability of the Test: A tester has options to choose from a variety of test automation tools. However, the prices of the testing tools will vary based on the expected features and functionality. The advanced tools come with record and playback feature. You can use the software simply by moving and clicking the mouse. Also, you can use the click buttons to directly check the user experience. At the same time, some tools also allow you to use image templates to emulate the user behavior accurately. These features make it easier for software testers to reuse a single test script to administer application testing.

Quick Testing of Cross-Platform Applications: Each successful application has to be compatible with major operating systems and devices. So most companies, nowadays, develop cross-platform software applications. If you are developing a web application, it must run on major web browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Opera. Your testing team has to spend a huge amount of time and efforts to ensure that the features and functionality of the application is supported by popular web browsers and operating systems. But you can easily test the performance of cross-platform applications by automating the testing process.

We provide qtp automation testing services. If you would like to know more about our expert automation testers, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

7 Solid Reasons to Use Selenium for Software Testing

The choice of web browser varies for one user to another. Some people still access the web applications on their desktop or laptop computers, whereas others run the apps on their smartphones, tablets and similar mobile devices. So each software developer and QA analyst often find it challenging to ensure that the web application is compatible with the most popular web browser and mobile devices.

As an open source web application testing tool, Selenium is popular due to its simple, easy, and effective features. In addition to allowing programmers to write codes using the programming language of their choice, the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) further makes it easier for them to test, debug, and combine multiple tests within a short span of time. There are also a number of additional advantages of using Selenium web testing for validating your web applications.

• Free and Open Source: Unlike the conventional IDEs used for software testing, Selenium is open source. An open source community constantly works on improving the performance and efficiency of open source automation testing tool to test a wide variety of web application. So a developer can simply download and use Selenium for free. The inexpensive nature of the IDE further made these suitable for all types of businesses.


• Supports Multiple Programming Languages: Selenium offers a comprehensive set of tools that supports web application testing across several platforms. You can further easily integrate the lightweight automation tools into a variety of projects. As Selenium supports several programming languages like C#, Java, Python, Perl and Ruby, you can easily make and test web applications by picking the language of your choice.


• Easy to Learn: The Selenium IDE is developed with most of the HTML features. So the tools avails the benefits of universally friendly coding structure. If you know only HTML and do not have any prior coding experience, you can easily use the web application testing tool. The simple and easy-to-learn feature of the IDE also make it easier for develop to change a specific value, command or target within the HTML to achieve great test results. A novice tester can refer to the documentation posted on the website http://seleniumhq.org to learn the testing tool within a few hours.


• Easy to Click, Record and Play: If you are used to record and run Macros in Microsoft Excel, it will be easier for you to incorporate the relevant test case guidelines. The simple yet effective IDE allow you to include the changes simply by right clicking in a test. The right click will make it easier for you to add assertions, element locators and other options. Further, you can concentrate on other projects, as the tests run in the background.


• Easy Debugging: Similar to the smart record and play option, Selenium also enables to debug a test within a few minutes. In case your test fails, you can easily follow the report that is displayed below the test screen. As the report will highlight where the test fails, you can concentrate on other works without monitoring the test constantly. Also, you have options to add specific action fixes to control and debug the test in a more efficient way.


• Option to Combine Individual Tests: Selenium is also popular among web application developers and tester due to its advanced test suites. You can use the test suites to combine individual test in a single batch. The single batch can also be used for a number of different projects. So you can easily test all modules of a web application within a few minutes. However, you must plan the tests properly to check several applications within a short span of time.


• Build and Store Library of Tests: If you are a QA analyst, Selenium makes it easier for you to build a library of tests. You can store the tests in a in a common repository, and access these tests to use or review the project in future. The option saves your time, while making it easier for you to concentrate on multiple projects at a time.

Regardless of the nature and type of your web application testing project, you can use Selenium to avail a number of benefits. If you are using the open source web application testing tool for the first time, you must concentrate on its key features to test your web application in a quick, easy and efficient manner.

We provide web automation testing services. If you would like to know more about what makes us the best selenium testing India provider, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.