Automation testing, while respecting the practice of continuous software delivery, should be as perfect as possible. The first thing that comes to mind is to change the completeness of the program code. Also, one should remember to count the number of lines of this code. And, of course, quite an important thing here is the number of tests to perform during the whole testing process.
Therefore, we’d like to highlight 5 features of good automation tests.
Autotest Should Check Something Important
Any autotest can be written for any purpose. But you have to ensure that the software you test is really worth all the effort. Any program code needs technical support. Hence, test development just performatively isn’t applicable in this case.
A small example of what should not be automated: you have to test a new website page and you notice a spelling mistake in its header. Most likely, you will report a bug to the tracking system, the development department will fix it, and then you will test this fix. What is the probability that the error will occur again? Probably, the risks are not very high, so there is no need to write an autotest to test spelling!
Test Fails Only When Needed
Sometimes, junior QA engineers at software testing companies forget to ensure that their tests fail when they should. If user tests are performed at all the cases regardless of the current technical environment, it looks great in reports but there’s no sense in these tests at all.
Tests Are Reliable
The test should provide complete information in all the cases. This level of ideal may never be achievable but QA engineers must strive for it mandatorily. However, don’t delete unstable tests. They will never be able to give correct information: did it fail because of some bug or because it is unstable?
It Is Easy to Maintain Tests?
As you know, any automated test suite containing spaghetti code is extremely difficult to maintain technically. With any change of the software program code, it takes from several hours to a couple of days to edit the current test suite. The program code of checks should be clear, logically organized, and, of course, not repeated with existing ones.
The Test Starts Instantly
The testing department should have only those tests that run very quickly so that the team can immediately understand if there is a failure and where exactly it is. You can speed up the automation procedure in different ways: for example, give preference to API tests over classic UI checks, or try a parallel start and a one-time configuration right before the run instead of setting up before the test itself. There are many options, and it all depends only on the tester and each project.
Leave A Comment