Today's businesses have a high adoption rate for test automation. The arduous, time-consuming, and resource-intensive daily testing of apps and systems is assisted by automated testing. However, testing teams frequently commit the same errors, which can make the test automation fail and have an effect on ROI. The most typical test automation flaws and mistakes—which have an impact on both test automation effectiveness and final product quality—are covered in this article.

top five test automation errors

wrong tool choice

Making the wrong choice seems absurd with so many options available to suit any need and budget. However, such diversity frequently results in incorrect tool selection and subpar decision-making. The following are the most frequent causes for automated testing in organizations to fail or perform below expectations:

• The cost of the tool is the primary selection factor;

• You didn't carefully consider each of the AUT's (application under test) testing requirements;

• The requirements for the test tool weren't properly stated by you;

• You miscalculated the level of ability and/or preparation of your testing team;

• You failed to adequately assess the tool vendor and competency;

• The only reason you chose the tool was that it was open-source.

Actually, it's critical to look into the following factors in addition to the pricing and features of the automated testing tool:

• project proposals in real-time;

• responses from actual users;

• provided community assistance

• Features offered and whether they satisfy your project's 

• needs, requirements, and so forth.

Additionally, to ensure a seamless and successful adoption, your team of testers who will use this tool should participate in the evolution process.

Play and record trap

Additionally to the prior error, all contemporary tools include built-in record and playback features. With the aid of these features, your testers can swiftly write automated scripts for the scenarios. But herein lies the biggest trap: many automation scripts are created using static data, which is typically not reusable. Furthermore, these technologies don't record any validations, and since testers must re-record scenarios whenever they change, any dynamic data may be lost.

This does not imply that the functionality is pointless. In actuality, good and efficient automated testing requires customization of the resulting script. Here, you can make a basic script using the record feature that will later be adjusted with data parameterization and additional checkpoints for validation. Additionally, you can modularize the script so that multiple testers from your team can work on it concurrently.

a lack of test validation

When data validation is a crucial component of automated testing, the test engineers don't validate a scenario at all levels. And among the main errors made is that. It's amazing, but businesses frequently:

• Never validate anything.

Developing and utilizing scripts without any form of validation is a grave error. The checkpoints must be used for script validation. It is advised to set up checkpoints at as many locations as you can in order to identify web elements, page settings, content on the page, and other things.

• Think exclusively of visible validation.

Even if everything functions flawlessly during UI (user interface) testing, this does not imply that the underlying code has been implemented correctly. Maintain validations that demonstrate that the procedure was performed correctly and that the anticipated data integrity was met.

To prevent bug leaking in AUT production, validate functionality at all levels using checkpoints rather than just visible UI components (texts, buttons, combo boxes, hyperlinks, etc.).

Choosing the Wrong Test Cases

Test cases selected for automation are to be used to represent a sizeable fraction of user behavior. However, the user has a wide range of options available to them. And many test engineers create these test cases incorrectly. As a result of using the wrong test cases, the product quality suffers and many faults in functionality are overlooked.

The secret is to examine every path that might exist in order to reduce them to a little sample of a highly representative test suite that encapsulates the whole functional flow of the program or application.

Elimination of Human Testing

Attempting to automate all of the test cases is another typical error. Not all features, however, should be tested in that manner. Such a strategy may result in a waste of time, resources, and value without improving the final product. Automated testing should ideally only be used to enhance manual testing.

Make a list of all the features so you can decide which ones to automate and which ones to leave to manual testing. For instance, manual testing is preferable for exploratory and usability tests whereas automated testing is quicker for particular scripts. So, avoid attempting to substitute human testing at all costs. Just the tests that take a lot of manual testing should be automated.

Conclusion

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