Is Test Automation new?

Automation

No, It’s nothing new. It existed in a primitive form in the old “green screen” days for 20+ years.

Many early adopters attempted to apply automation to applications-under-development but found themselves spending more time developing and maintaining automated test scripts than they did manual testing.

Automation

However…

While the rest of the IT world carried on its merry way and new technologies continued to be produced, the automation tools have made a comeback after many years of experimentation.

In 21st Century, automated testing is an integral portion of the continuous delivery and agile based development which is now standard practice in the industry. Effort expended towards automation is more than rewarding if the right solution is identified and adopted.

Working from scratch doesn’t present any challenges but Sprint after sprint wemust add new features and ensure that whatever we built previously continues to work. It has become imperative for organizations to integrate testing with development efforts to realize the true potential of Agile environment. Having an automated testing framework, we cantake care of both system and integration tests and also add a lot of firepower to such a team.

With the rapid growing demand for test automation experts, it is very crucial to gain the relevant technical skills for candidates.

Data reveals that one of the most searchable question in google – What are the most desirable test automation tools in the upcoming year of 2017?

In order to answer this question, we must say that tools are Just the Means And Not The End. The tools and frameworks we use to achieve test automation are not the real goal of our testing efforts. Goal is to support new development efforts by providing rapid feedback to the team. Additionally, do not automate for the sake of automation. We should understand fully what to actually automate.

So many companies are doing test automation, you’d think it would be simple…

Automation

Even though challenges of test automation are not easily conquered, but the true mark of success is when the process is simple, adaptable, accessible to the fraternity and most important of all when automation ROI is tangible to all the stakeholders. Building the right automation suite is a gradual and a steady process.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Narasimha Raju

NARASIMHA RAJU

Head Testing COE