Why is it critical to perform Automated Testing for the websites?

The consumer scenario is changing and even the risks are piling up due to the challenges laid by Digital Transformation. Additionally, the risks around cyberattacks are going up, resulting in anxiety around performance, functionality, and accessibility of websites during business critical scenarios. Hence, this has led to a lot of focus on testing websites across various parameters, and beyond just security. The focus has also been on continuous testing, which is impossible without leveraging automation frameworks and automated testing formats.

Testing of websites has multiple reasons and trigger points, which are impossible to meet if automation is not adopted. Even with scrupulous software development by experienced groups, the software tends to get delivered with defects. Bugs and glitches tend to creep into the system and create issues while the application is running LIVE on desktops and portable dimensions. Test Automation enables you to boost the effectiveness, efficiency, and maximize the test coverage for the application.

Automated Testing tools enable you to playback pre-recorded and predefined actions and eventually compare the results with the expected behaviour. It also helps to report back the actions and track the testing process. These features are impossible to achieve without implementing automation and the tools. That’s the reason automated software testing is critical for the software development cycle and application development. It not only accelerates the software testing process, but also makes it more efficient, traceable, and result-oriented.

It is not only critical for big software development organizations, but also for smaller set-ups. However, in case you are leveraging licensed tools, the process gets very expensive. That’s the reason experts recommend that test automation should be planned strategically, making it more objective-oriented.

A piece in DevOps Online states, ‘Intelligent test automation heralds the third wave in the test automation or DevOps journey, with its pre-emptive, prescriptive and predictive approach to quality. Simply put, intelligent testing uses AI and ML to address the pain points that organisations face, by introducing data-driven insights, predictions and recommendations.’

While implementing automation for websites, it is important to set the scope right. Executing automation for specific tasks can be impactful and logical, rather than just applying across the site. This will also help teams to keep a control over the testing and automation process, and make it more enhancing for the overall software testing cycle. Most importantly, it makes testing more traceable and effective for teams even in the longer run.

It is critical to understand whether your web application needs automation across various features or only for a select sections. Making these decisions is absolutely essential to enable a process that gives results and doesn’t just get executed blindly through the testing cycle. It can be chaotic if automation is executed without a particular plan. Setting tangible objectives is absolutely essential and makes total sense to achieve what is needed.

A research by Gartner calls for those responsible for application development strategies in digital business initiatives to ensure that quality is a team focus by making use of communities of practice or guilds to discover, share and evolve best practices. Gartner believes that shifting the focus of QA from quality assurance to quality assistance is the way ahead.

The industry trend show a focus on more quality assistance, which will result in quality assurance. Automation of tests is expected to offer that extra edge and support for testing teams over manual testing, which enables maximum test coverage, shorter test cycles, repetition of tests with minimal errors, and with high accuracy.

Referring to achieving maximum test coverage, automated software testing can improve the scope of tests. This will help to improve the software quality and enable teams to avoid the lengthy manual tests. Additionally, these tests can run across multiple computers even with different configurations. It also helps to look within an application for memory contents, data tables, and file contents; enabling you to evaluate the behaviour of the application and understand whether it is in sync with your expectations. Test Automation can also execute multiple tests at a time, enhancing the test coverage that is impossible to achieve with manual testing.

According to a research report by Everest Group, “The QA landscape has been evolving over the past decade and there is a clear shift from independent testing of applications to a more holistic brand assurance of business processes and outcomes. Even as enterprises adopt Agile and DevOps and continue their journey of integrated testing, service providers are strengthening their capabilities to deliver end-to-end QA orchestration to their clients. Providers are also investing in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to expand their test automation suite of tools and IP, and even include performance and security testing into the continuous delivery model, thus enabling brand assurance for their clients’ business.”

The research presents the assessment and detailed profiles of 23 IT service providers featured on the QA services PEAK Matrix. Each service provider profile presents a comprehensive picture of its service suite, scale of operations, and domain investments.

Cigniti’s test automation strategy enables organizations to increase release velocity, reduce time to market and reduce overall testing effort resulting in a significant return on investment (ROI). Cigniti has developed a tool and technology agnostic, plug-and-play test automation framework with pre-built interfaces to CI servers, application lifecycle management tools and defect management tools that fully support the majority of test automation tools adopted by organizations.