4 Patterns Not Follow during Test Automation

April 04 09:27 2016 by Nataliia Vasylyna

Automated testing is considered as a way to quickly check the system condition and significantly cut the costs of the product delivery. Nevertheless, not every test automation method can help a software testing company in this aim.

What Test Automation Patterns Are Better Not to Follow?

Writing and executing automated tests through user interface. If all tests are implemented this way, it costs a lot to create and maintain them. It should be considered that functional testing usually follows automated unit testing. Tests should be executed through UI only if there are no other options.
Using only licensed testing tools. Commercial tools have numerous restrictions and are often the reason of fragile automated tests. Instead, there are a lot of great open source tools that can simplify test automation and integration with version control systems.
Launching automated tests manually. In this case, there is a high chance that tests will not be run on schedule. Continuous integration systems can help to cope with this problem. Only those tests that are regularly executed through such systems can be of benefit to a product.
Losing faith in automated testing in case of failure. It often results in significant reduction of budget allocated for test automation. To avoid this, a team should fix and revise the tests that caused a failure, not just give up on automation right away if something went wrong.

If a company is able to eliminate the usage of above-mentioned patterns, its automated software testing will be effective and productive.