How to design an automation framework for different testing phases?

With the growing technology, businesses and individuals realize the importance of automation testing, as it plays a great role in the success and failure of the software. What do you understand with the term? This blog post introduces you to how to design an automation framework for different testing phases. It displays some benefits by applying them in practice in the UI Testing, Performance Testing, and Acceptance Test-driven Development phase.

What is Test Automation or Automation testing?

Test automation uses special software, known as “automation,” to control the execution of tests, the comparison of actual outcomes to predicted outcomes, and the generation of test reports.

Test automation can be used to ensure that requirements for a system or software are met and provide objective evidence that a system is working as expected. Test automation tools have been developed in order to reduce this time-consuming and resource-intensive task. During this testing, programming languages such as Java or Python that allow testers not only to write code but also analyze it for errors before an application is released are used.

Automation frameworks can be used for different testing phases. They are a way to manage the process of executing a set of tests automatically according to a certain parameter, which is decided by the designer or developer. It has been applied in different testing phases like test environment, iterative development, and regression testing for improving efficiency.

What’s the need for automation testing?

QA Automation testing benefits a company and an individual diversively and ensures to get perfect software. Automation frameworks play an important role in enhancing the speed of the development cycle, preventing regression bugs, and saving costs.

For this, some most common design patterns are used for different testing phases. Automation frameworks are considered to be either generic or customized for different test phases. While applying or using advanced software testing, you can effectively enhance the application’s performance by increasing its efficiency.

It is advised to create an automation framework before beginning the test to ensure the quality by the experts that will not only support the complete software testing process but will also aid in enhancing the quality of the process.

A quick look at benefits of automation frameworks-

● Reuse the code

● Easily maintenance of code

● Improve the functionality of the software

● Proper automation test framework increase the efficiency of the test

● Effectively rescue the overall testing costs

● Detect the errors and flaws at the initial stage

Components to design an automation framework

Achieving an excellent application that works flawlessly with the advanced parameters is essential. Thus, to ensure the outstanding performance of the software on various conditions, several tests are performed at different phases. Some of the top automation testing components are as follows:

● Integration testing

It’s a test that ensures the functionality of the software at various units as software is divided into multiple units. Integration testing assists in rationally aggregating and testing all of those units. This determines the degree of interactivity among the units. Plus, it also determines how a product will function as a whole.

● End-to-end testing

It is like integration testing and works from the beginning to the end of software development. This test flows strategically, replicates the real user’s expectation, and creates a situation to check the performance of the software in that case. It is beneficial to external integration testing.

● Library testing

Through this test, all reusable components and external connections, such as application functions, generic functions, databases, and many more, are stored in a library without implementing other testing units. Software testers are only implemented in the libraries, and tests run using the libraries as the files and data are automatically stored and created.

● Data management testing

Extracting the stored data from the software is one of the challenging tasks, and through this test, all the non-production data can be revealed as close to the real environment. However, plugins and testing libraries usually scavenge the data. Thus, it’s critical to perform appropriate data management testing that maximizes the success of test automation. This test defines the success of the application in the real environment.

● UI testing

For the UI testing automation framework, a generic and customized approach is being used by many testers nowadays. The reason behind using these frameworks is to achieve crystal clear test cases and at the same time maintaining efficiency in test execution with minimum effort. One of the major advantages here is that you can focus more on writing better quality tests rather than dealing with redundant tasks like environment management, files preparation, etc.

● Unit testing

This is one of the imperative ways to execute test scenarios. Unit testing is used to test individual source code units to confirm that they work as planned. For better code output, testers and developers employ unit test libraries and accelerate the software testing. Developers utilize the standardized parameters to access these libraries. Plus, by practicing this sub-part of automation testing, developers reduce the risk factors.

● BDD (Behaviour-driven development) testing

The software performs distinctively at different situations and platforms as the code of the application changes at various stages and the endpoint. Through BDD testing, the problems generated by the code changing can be easily resolved and handled. This test ensures the excellence of the software as it encourages the flexibility of the software.

How to choose the best automation framework?

The best automation framework depends upon various factors, and it’s critical to choose an appropriate framework ensuring the excellent performance of the software in the real world.

● Usage of coding and non-coding defines the relevant automation framework. So, compare various frameworks and then select the one.

● Operating systems also determine the automation framework and different operating systems require various forms of software testing.

● The resources mean your budget is the critical factor in determining the perfect automation framework.

To The Sum Up

In contemporary times, software automation testing is imperative and saves time and effort. By following an appropriate automation process, an organization can gain abundant benefits and ensure high performance in the industry, along with saving resources under their budget.

Author BIO

Kamal Singh is a Digital Marketing strategist at Devstringx, an top reactJs web development company in India. He has 5+ years of experience in the information technology industry that inspire him to share his knowledge through articles. He also works with a team of experienced creative digital marketing strategists to generate unique and data-driven campaigns. He is an expert to analyze business USP and implement effective digital marketing initiatives.