Need for Quality Assurance Initiatives in Automation Testing

Automation testing is the process in which an automation tool is used to test a particular product for its functionality and other features. This process of testing is preferred over manual testing due to a number of reasons like it is cost-effective, less time consuming, easy to conduct testing on multi-lingual sites, does not require human intervention as well as increases test coverage.
However, automation testing aims to increase the test efficiency and software’s value, implementing this process also involves a number of risks. Some of these include high starting cost, limited features that can be set for automated testing, requires one to have good understanding of programming, etc. Therefore, it is important for the person conducting automation testing to be sure about the choice he/she makes of the software to conduct this test and also be vigilant of all the risks involved.

Since, testing is the process that is carried out before launching a product in the market and in fact, even after that. Therefore, it becomes important to maintain highest quality standards and take some quality assurance initiatives so as to ensure that the product delivered is flawless and best in terms of quality.
Need of Quality Assurance Initiatives
Quality assurance is a planned and organized set of activities that are carried out to ensure that the product delivered is highest in quality as well as conform to the set requirements, procedures and standards. This is not a one stage process but a regular initiative that needs to be taken during the entire software development life cycle (SDLC).
Almost every company follows this practice and ensures that the product delivered by it has been delivered in compliance with pre-determined requirements and standards. Ensuring the best quality in its product is one of the simplest yet most effective way to retain customers for long and make sure that the product manufactured is used by the intended audience.
Quality Assurance Initiatives in Automation Testing       
Like every testing process, it is also important in case of automation testing to ensure that the utmost level of quality is maintained. It is the responsibility of the testing team and other members of the project to ensure that the necessary quality assurance initiatives are taken. This is to ensure that testing a product using automation testing tools does not degrade its quality.
Apart from this, there are a number of other reasons that make it essential for the companies to take quality assurance initiatives in automation testing. Some of these include:

  1. Maximize performance:

Testing a product using automation testing does not imply that all the bugs would be easily identified and fixed. It is important to understand that automation testing does the majority of testing job but manual intervention is important to ensure that there are no errors or flaws that might act as a hurdle in the product’s performance.
Setting high quality standards ensures that the product delivered in the market after testing is free from flaws and hence, can be used to maximize performance and output.

  1. Value Customers’ time:

Companies should understand that it is extremely crucial and important to value the time of their customers. It is easy to simply develop and launch a product in the market. But, this might turn out to be a major loss causing decision ever taken by the company.
Launching the product without rigorous testing and ensuring quality even in the testing process might lead to a delivery of poor performing product. This, in turn, might end up wasting a lot of customers’ precious time as well as their trust in the company.

  1. Increased Business:

Delivering a high-performing and reliable product in the market help ensure higher retention rate of the company. Retention rate implies the rate at which a company is able to hold back its customers or increase their loyalty towards the company.
A product without a flaw is sure to gather higher attention and more users. This, in turn, helps the company to win more customers and hence, attain more positive publicity.

  1. Optimum Quality:

Taking quality assurance initiatives in automation testing is not just about bug fixing, it is also about fulfilling promises made to the customers. Whether the demand for the product was raised by the customer or it is a company owned product, taking some extra initiatives pays back in long run.
Higher product quality implies that the customer would be able to trust the company as well as its products easily.

  1. Ends Scope of Error:

While it is true that testing in itself is the process that helps ensure the delivery of best quality products in the market, taking extra caution can be an added advantage. A product might have been developed by the best team of developers but this does not end the scope of errors and flaws. This, in turn, proves that a product without proper testing is very likely to fail.
automation testing
If a product is under automation testing process and one still opts to take quality assurance initiatives, this is sure to ensure the product delivered will be without any sort of flaws and complications.
Quality assurance initiatives in automation testing is not about doubting the proficiency of the team or the process. It is just about being extra careful and making sure that the company is able to win a happy and satisfied clientele. Also, taking quality assurance initiatives in automation testing is not about lengthening the process, it is actually more about improving the results for the company in long run.

Why the Need for Web Service Test Automation

Web service test automation solutions are the ones that help in testing and identifying whether a particular application communicates effectively and is able to access functions correctly from the web. These solutions also effectively help in confirming how a particular web service connected to them, behaves in different situations. In other words, this solution is an effective way to verify whether the services meet the terms of business logic and also deliver the desired output at the user’s end.
app testing
While it is well-known that web services provide flawless connection between two software applications over private intranets and the internet, the testing of these services is used to check the ways in which a single we service functions and managed load for a single client and balances the same with the increase in the number of users accessing it.
Web service testing is helpful in avoiding the delay in detection of errors, which, in turn, might lead to complex and costly repairs. When this process is automated, it gets easier to repeat tests as and when required. Therefore, using web services test automation is not only helpful in the development of sound and efficient web services development process but also in the assessment of their functionality, performance, and scalability.
Need of web services automation
While there can be numerous ways to conduct web services testing, but a typical one includes the following tasks:

  • Generating client or skeleton code for the web service.
  • Defining the required test inputs.
  • Imploring the web service using the client or skeleton code.
  • Generating client or skeleton code.
  • Response verification in terms of whether the actual response is similar to that of the expected outcome.

 Benefits of Web Service Test Automation
 Using web service testing automation can benefit the company in a number of ways. Some of these are as mentioned below: 

  1. Improved performance and reliability of SOA:

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a set of services that communicate with each other. These services that are connected by web services, can either be a data transfer or a group of activities engaging in coordinating some other activity.
Using web service test automation tools can help in improving the performance and reliability of these SOAs. This is owing to their ability to communicate effectively and testing the ground on various measures.

  1. Eases testing:

Using a web service test automation tool helps in simplifying the process of testing web application. This is owing to their ability to effectively communicate with the web applications, which further adds on their ability to deliver the desired performance. Therefore, one can opt to use these tools for testing both SOA-based and REST API-based web services.

  1. Supports cloud environment

Cloud computing is a type of computing infrastructure and software model that gives its users access to shared pools of resources from any part of the world. This shared pool of resources can be computer networks, applications or servers and can be rapidly provided with minimal management effort, often over the Internet.
When a user is required to execute a test of web services that are available in a cloud environment, using a web service test automation tool makes it easier. Using this tool enables a faster and quicker testing.

  1. Simplifies testing over regression cycles

Regression testing cycle is a kind of software testing which is used to confirm whether software’s previous version performs in the same way like it did before the development of new version or interfacing with other software.
Web service automation helps in reducing the testing time and efforts it takes in testing a product over regression cycles.

  1. Ensures complete testing of product

 Using web service test automation vanishes the concept of testing one or some aspects of particular software. Instead, making use of this tool ensures a 100% functional test coverage of the same, hence, ensuring better performance.
It is, therefore, advisable to the companies to use this web service test automation. The reasons are multiple, from ease of use, reduced time to better performance.

Challenges in Implementing Automation Testing in an Agile Environment

Test automation is an important part of mobile software testing. By using automated testing services, companies accelerate the process of software testing and expand the performance area. However, when it comes to implementation of automation testing in an agile environment, there are a lot of challenges.
If these problems are not addressed, there is a good chance that software automated testing might fail.
app testing
In agile development, the focus in on building the right product and cutting down the long-term risk associated with software development. Agile development process promotes and favors change, and to keep the change within the permissible constraints, investment in the test automation is compulsory.
Moreover, investment in continuous integration is necessary to curtail feedback cycles and to evade the execution of the repetitive task.
A key fundamental of agile development is that testing is done at every stage and regular assessment of the working of product that is being developed. Implementing teams face many challenges, a few of which have been mentioned below. A well-organized test automation process helps tone down these challenges:
Sparse Test Area
Change in coding leads to poor test coverage as the changes were expected beforehand. Regression automation (which ensures that any change in the code hasn’t altered any existing functionality and software is working as per requirement) could be a good solution.
Unplanned Breaking of Codes Due to Frequent Changes
Since the codes are altered on a daily basis, the possibility of code (comprising of working features) breaking, is much high. To tone down this problem, a proper automation process has to be crafted with continuous integration.
Sparse API Testing
Most mobile apps are now developed with a service-orientated architecture that reveals their APIs to everyone, thereby allowing third-party developers to supplement the solution. When designing APIs, it is possible to neglect API testing, due to the high complexity of its implementation. Testing of application programming interfaces requires high coding skill set, which can be done using automation tools. This makes certain that APIs are tested thoroughly every time.
Performance Issues
More the functionality of the software more will be the complexity of its code structure. To make it easy, more lines are added, and it further results in performance issues if the focus sidelines the end-user performance experience. The solution is to find out the line of codes causing performance issues and their impact over time. A variety of load testing software can assist in the search for the slow area and can record the performance over time, to make the performance efficient from version to version.
automation testing
Complex Mobile Testing
The manual process of mobile testing is a time-consuming process, and the complexity is further increasing the number of new arrivals in the market. To ensure that the proper functioning of the code, there is a requirement of well-built automation software to help mobile app testing services.
Automation testing in the agile environment and its approach is decided based on the requirement of the project, as different projects require different automation tools.
There are IT service providers who excel in automation testing services and Testbytes is one among them. Consult our experts and learn how a right software can improve the performance and productivity.