Going back to a few years ago, software testing only focused on finding errors in a digital product. The ultimate goal was to improve the quality of the product.

Today, software testing covers a larger picture of the product development process.

But, how?

In a nutshell, automation testing has always been at the forefront of software testing. The software testing industry is predicted to strengthen even more than it did in the last decade based on the latest test automation trends.

A report by GlobeNewswire suggests that the global automation testing market will grow by USD 28.8 billion by 2024. You must stay up-to-date on the latest automation testing trends to remain relevant in a constantly changing testing environment.

With the shift-left approach, testers wrote test cases even before the requirement was clearly defined, and testing continued parallel to development. However, the shift-right approach allows products to be tested, monitored, and updated in production environments rather than completely passing the responsibility of the product to the Ops team.

What is Test Automation?

Automated test execution refers to the use of separate software from the software to be tested to control the test execution processes and to compare results from real-world testing to predicted outcomes. A formal testing process already established can make automated tests more efficient, perform tests that are not feasible to perform manually, or complete repetitive tasks. Continuous testing and continuous delivery can only be achieved using automation.

You can also enter test data into the Automation Testing Software, results compared to expected, and then generate actual results and detailed reports. The costs associated with Automation Testing Software are substantial.

It will be necessary to execute the same test suite repeatedly throughout successive development cycles. It’s possible to record this test suite and replay it if necessary using test automation tools like LambdaTest

This way, someone can automatically run the test suite with no human involvement. It is then more cost-effective to automate tests. Automation should reduce the number of test cases you must run manually, not eliminate manual testing.

Why Has Test Automation Become So Popular?

Test automation can help you reduce your feedback cycle and validate your product more quickly during different phases of development. Test automation is helpful during the development phase because it enables you to detect problems or bugs early, which increases the efficiency of the team.

Automation testing has several advantages over manual testing, such as the ability to sprint tests, consistently, and on-demand. Verifying that the software is still operating as it has done so becomes a simple matter. The use of practices such as test-driven development (TDD) and behavior-driven development (BDD) to create test automation can also result in better coding quality and better design. Let’s inspect the benefits of test automation:

  • Speeds up the delivery process
  • Enhances quality
  • Contributes to continuous delivery
  • Ensures confidence in rapidly strengthening software
  • Allows programmers to test and ensure the stability of their code commits using automated tests

A pipeline for automated software development offers significant benefits to teams:

  • Besides automating tasks, a pipeline also eliminates costly, error-prone manual work.
  • Because new team members do not have to learn a complex development and test environment, they can get started and become productive faster.
  • Teams can spot any code that is unfit for delivery and then rejects it immediately and provide feedback.

Speeding Software Deployment With Test Automation

You need automation tools and frameworks to create even the simplest delivery pipeline. Considering the number of tools and advances in their automation, it is common to maintain a pipeline using a dedicated team of individuals who oversee and maintain it. Most automated delivery pipelines consist of at least of the tools below:

Tools for source-code management include subversion and Git.

  • The build tools include Ant, Make, Maven, and Gradle.
  • Continuous integration (CI) server: Travis-CI and Jenkins are examples.
  • Several tools are available for managing configurations, such as Ansible, SaltStack, Chef, and Puppet.
  • IBM UrbanCode Deploy, Bamboo, and Chef are among the deployment and provisioning tools.
  • There are three main testing frameworks: xUnit, Behave, and Selenium. Each framework is designed for a particular programming language.

There is also commonly a repository for stored artifacts in pipelines, which includes binaries and install packages that are developed during the build stage. These items may either be collected or stored in this repository.

A Quick Walkthrough of How to Deploy Without Bugs

Building a New Project

Tools in continuous integration (CI) run an automated test and a few industry-standard tools to validate that an application is free of problems and errors. A test is run every time an application is built. You must follow up on failed builds with a bug reporting report and identify the failure reasons. As a result, the team can correct the code in a shorter amount of time.

Managing Releases

Versioning and mapping of successful builds are done as part of the release process. These releases are graduated over time, according to an organization’s process. In terms of release management, development, staging, and production environments are the most common. When unmarked reasons prevent the new releases from being compatible with each other, the release repository serves as a standby solution. Businesses can roll back to a previous version quickly and continue to run smoothly.

Deployment Continuously

The breakage time and downtime for each release have been reduced. As a result, there is a higher level of confidence about deployment quality, and a rollback plan is always available in case of an unfortunate event. In CD, the role of configuration manager is completely automated through sets of code.

As soon as a fresh environment is required, infrastructure as a Code IAC is automatically deployed and up and running. This gives system administrators greater confidence in their environments and code deployments. During deployments or scaling up, there will be no more broken sites or nightmares about rollbacks. Reduced downtime and an improved client satisfaction index are the overall effects.

Test automation tools such as LambdaTest are ensuring quality delivery of projects in less time while minimizing efforts and reducing costs. Get in touch with our experts right away if you’d like additional help to get this right the first time.

In a Nutshell

It may take a while to receive feedback on newly developed features without testing automation. Automation of your test process helps you reduce the feedback cycle and provide faster validation of your product, resulting in a quicker time to market. Testing automation is especially helpful since it can help identify problems or bugs early in the development process, which makes the team more efficient.

Your entire team will validate fewer of your newly developed features when you automate your testing procedure. This also helps with communication with other departments, like marketing, design, or product owners who depend on the results of the tests. Logs from the automated tests can be observed and analyzed easily by these departments.

Selenium testing tools play a pivotal role in whether a test strategy succeeds or fails and thus will make or break the success of a testing strategy. From development to production, with the right testing tool and an efficient DevOps process, the process will run smoothly.