Key Steps in Automated Testing

by Nataliia Vasylyna | March 3, 2011 1:00 am

Even though every piece of software undergoes thorough testing, when it is delivered software almost always has defects. Test engineers strive to catch them before the product is released but bugs will be bugs – they always creep in, and even with the best manual testing processes, they often reappear. Automated software testing is the best way to increase the effectiveness, efficiency and coverage of your software testing.

Some Guidelines for Automated Software Testing

• Have at least one real programmer in your automated testing group.
• Develop standards for your team.
• Figure out and document what you’re testing, and keep it simple.
• Use Robot’s record-and-playback feature to baseline your scripts.
• Modularize and build reusability into your scripts. Write wrappers around most functions and put them in libraries. Call wrapped functions whenever possible.
• Document everything you’re doing to the greatest detail as time allows.
• Use a data-driven testing technique (data pools).

Start with testing simple functionality, If you’re testing a GUI or Web application. This includes verifying that all the correct controls exist on the screen, the proper fields enable/disable when actions are taken, etc. If you’ are automating performance testing, start with just one virtual user and set your goal at a low number (no more than twenty). When you get one virtual user to work, double this and get two to work. Keep doubling this until you get to twenty. Each increment could present a new set of challenges.

Manual vs. Automated Testing

Manual software testing is performed by a person who goes through application screens, trying various usage and input combinations, comparing the results to the expected behavior and recording their observations. Manual tests are often repeated during development cycles for source code changes, multiple operating environments, and hardware configurations. This is a laborious, time consuming and expensive proposition. With automated testing [1]software, testing tools can playback pre-recorded and predefined actions, compare the results with the expected behavior and report the success or failure of these manual tests to a test engineer. Once automated tests are created they can easily be repeated and they can be extended to perform all the tasks that are impossible with manual testing. Because of this, automated software testing has become an essential component of successful development projects.

Related Posts:

• Manual Testing vs. Automated Testing: A Decision Point[2]
• Test Automation: mysterious SilkTest[3]
• 6 Steps To Automate Your Testing Process[4]

Source URL: https://blog.qatestlab.com/2011/03/03/key-steps-in-automated-testing/

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