A lack of test automation feels like writing a review for a business you visited a year ago. That review will practically be useless because the experience happened so long ago, so the business owner won’t exactly appreciate that kind of feedback.
The same happens in software development. Without test automation tools, feedback for new software features will take a while. That feedback won’t be useless, of course, but it could lead to setbacks and lower efficiency.
But the process of test automation also has some challenges. Knowing them helps to address the weakest points in software delivery chains and releasing products faster.
1. A Lack of Skills
For some companies, achieving the benefits of faster development with test automation is still impossible because of the skill shortage. This problem has been affecting IT forever, and it seems to be getting worse: now 53% of companies report lacking cybersecurity specialists.
Even a simple Google search is enough to realize that there’s a huge shortage of test automation folks.
Source: Author’s screenshot
The lack of skills often leads to a lot of manual testing and missed opportunities to speed up software development processes. Some companies choose to give up test automation projects after realizing that some processes require knowledge that people build for years.
How to Solve This Challenge?
The skill shortage is real, but not a good reason to put test automation on hold. Here are several ideas to deal with this issue:
- Use automation tools to help human testers. Consider using software test automation tools like Selenium, Cucumber, or Appium to help your existing testing team to handle automation.
- Outsource test automation. Hiring remote teams is a fast and cost-effective way to get access to talented testers overseas.
- Invest in knowledge building. Consider buying online courses and other resources to allow your in-house teams to learn automation in testing.
2. Deciding Where to Start Automation
“Which test should we automate first? Should we leave some tests for manual work? Or maybe 100% automation is the way to go? And, by the way, where do we even start?”
These are common questions companies have to address before starting test automation. The approach they choose will define the speed and amount of their work.
Here are a couple of common test automation approaches:
- UI test automation > integration/component test automation > unit test automation
- Unit test automation > integration/component test automation > UI test automation
The best approach depends on the product. The first respective approach is more popular in non-agile software development and often leads to more resource- and time-consuming UI tests.
How to Solve This Challenge?
Consider using the second test automation approach: (“Unit test automation > integration/component test automation > UI test automation.”)
This approach is called Mike Cohn’s Test Automation Pyramid and is widely recognized as a way to reduce costs and increase the efficiency of testing.
Source: Ministry of Testing
Here are a few excellent reasons to choose this approach:
- First step: Unit tests. They should be the first step in the automation process because they are the cheapest, easiest, and fastest to complete. That’s why finding and fixing bugs will be easier at this stage.
- Second step: Integration/API/Component tests. These tests are more complex than unit ones, so consider automation as many of them as possible.
- Third step: UI tests. Try automating the most important tests because they are hard and costly to run.
3. Effective Testing Team Collaboration
Collaboration is a challenge for any software development team, but it becomes even more daunting when test automation is involved.
Automation is still a relatively fresh approach, and it calls for more communication, planning, and teamwork. This means that software developers, manual testers, project managers, and test automation specialists must cooperate to make sense of historical testing data and decide automation processes.
How to Solve This Challenge?
Project managers should work to encourage and promote communication between all teams involved in a project. They should ensure that test automation engineers can receive information from business managers, software developers, manual testers, and other project stakeholders.
Tips for better collaboration:
- Set up specific communication recommendations, availability times, and mandatory regular meetings for the testing team
- Ensure that teams present their weekly achievements and projects to other teams to update them on their progress
- Organize one-on-one meetings with team members to find out about their concerns, goals, and recommendations to improve project performance.
4. Dealing with False Positive and False Negative Results
A false-positive test result happens when a test scenario didn’t work as intended but the test itself was marked as completed. Conversely, if a test scenario went well, but the test failed, the result is considered a false negative.
If a test automation system keeps generating false positive or false negative results, then you might want to consider running some manual tests. In this case, there might be something wrong within the system, so you can’t really rely on the results it generated.
How to Solve This Challenge?
The fact that a test automation system generates false positive and false negative results means that there might be some problems in the test plans, test cases, or the testing environment.
Consider checking the system for potential issues. Some manual testing might also be needed to validate the tests that have been automated to that point.
Related: Software Testing Using Artificial Intelligence
5. Setting Test Automation Strategy Goals
Investing in test automation is a major project that a clear direction.
If a test automation strategy doesn’t have a set of clear goals to follow, there are no benchmarks to judge its performance by. This might happen if a company chooses a generic, immeasurable goal like “release a quality application as fast as possible.”
How to Solve This Challenge?
Clearly define goals and KPIs for your test automation strategy goals. This is one of the test automation best practices that can make a project more focused and result-oriented.
Start by asking yourself these four questions:
- What could be the biggest benefits of test automation?
- How can we increase the ROI of test automation with lesser effort?
- What issues are we looking to address with our test automation strategy?
- What tests can we automate fully or partially?
The final versions of goals can be related to:
- Tests
- Overall company’s goals.
For example, you can aim for a 35% faster time to market, 50% faster regression testing, or 25% lower overall testing cost. These goals are likely to be aligned with the goals of the organization.
Also, you can aim to automate some percentage of specific tasks (tasks with clear pass/fail results, tasks that operate through different data sets, especially time-consuming tasks, etc.). These are team-level goals that aren’t aligned with the company’s goals.
Five Common Test Automation Challenges: Summary
Test automation has become an essential component in the world of DevOps and Agile software development. And many companies applying this strategy run into these five challenges along the way.
Although test automation tools might make many processes simpler, keeping your team focused and working well is something you’ll need to watch closely. If you ensure that these five challenges are addressed, chances are pretty good that the software development project will be a major success.