Since the development of software testing today, it has been gradually standardized and more capable, and its process is developing every day. The technical proficiency of the tester is critical to the success of the entire testing phase. Testing no longer means just finding errors; its scope has expanded, and its importance can be seen from the beginning of any development project.

When talking about the Automation Testing Life Cycle, most people think it is just a part of the SDLC, but it is much more than that. It is necessary to understand that automated testing should be a prominent part of an automated testing strategy and have a life cycle. Businesses must adapt it to improve the quality of their software products.

As we move forward, we need to answer the following questions: what is the Automation Testing Life Cycle, and what stages are there in the Automation Testing Life Cycle.

Phases of the Automation Testing Life Cycle

A robust test plan should support test automation. The predefined structure of the process helps design test plans and develop strategies for selecting automated test tools to set up test environments, design test cases, and write scripts. It further defines the scope of test automation, test preparation, implementation, test validation, and reporting.

These six phases in the Automation Testing Life Cycle run parallel with the software development cycle. The following are the stages:

Phase 1: determine the scope of automated testing.

Phase 2: select the right automation tool

Phase 3: define the plan, strategy, and design of automated testing

Phase 4: set up the test environment

Phase 5: test scripts and execution

Phase 6: test analysis and reporting

1. Determine the Scope of Automated Testing

Determining the automated testing scope is the first step in the Automation Testing Life Cycle. In this step, the testing team needs to determine the feasibility of automated testing. Feasibility analysis is essential for each stage to check its operability and help the testing team design the test scripts. Things to consider at this stage include:

• Which modules of the application should and should not be automated?
• Which test cases can or need to be automated?
• How to automatize these test cases?
• Which automation tools should we choose that consider the adaptability between automation and test goals?
• Budget, implementation cost, available resources, and available skills.

We should conduct test cases and automation testing feasibility analysis before starting test automation.

2. Select the Right Automation Tool

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This is one of the most critical phases of ATLC because automated testing is tool-dependent. Carefully consider and select the right automation tool to automate UI components. Selecting a tool may require completing another level of analysis. Budget and cost should always be kept in mind before selecting tools. In addition, the team should also analyze whether the resources have technical skills and whether the tools support the technology required for the project. In addition, this tool should provide strong technical support to answer questions that may exist in use.

3. Planning, Strategy, and Design of Automated Testing

This is another committed step in the Automation Testing Life Cycle, explaining how to implement the test automation strategy. The primary step in this phase is to decide which test automation framework to use. When choosing the right tool for your project, you must keep in mind the technology required for the software project. Therefore, it is essential to conduct an in-depth analysis of the product.

When executing an automated test plan, testers establish standards and guidelines for test process creation, hardware, software, and network requirements of the test environment, test data prerequisites, test schedules, bug tracking mechanisms, tools, etc. Testers are also responsible for deciding the test architecture, test program structure, and test program management.

The test management strategy covers the following points:

• The test management tool will capture all manual test cases. Testers need to collect manual test cases and determine which ones need to be tested.
• A thorough research must be done to identify the testing framework and understand the strengths and weaknesses of automated testing tools.
• Additionally, testers need to understand all relevant threats, contexts, and dependencies between tools and applications.
• The team must also build a test suite for automated test cases in the test management tool.
• The established testing strategy cannot be implemented or executed without stakeholder and customer approval.

4. Set Up the Test Environment

The test team must set up, track, and arrange the test environment at this stage. In other words, it means that at this stage, a machine/remote environment is established to execute the test cases. A virtual machine is required because not all users use the same machine to access the web application. Therefore, we need to observe the various devices, browsers, and versions users use. If compatibility across different device-browser-OS combinations is not correctly verified, the site may not look the same as what the user sees. For this, cross-browser testing becomes a top priority to ensure that your web application provides a great user experience as expected.

This stage requires detailed planning to handle as many scenarios as possible and increase test coverage. Proper tracking and timelines of all environment setup activities must be maintained with the responsible involvement of the test team. Apart from that, everything has to be taken care of setting up the test environment, scheduling network and hardware resources, performing test database cleanup, developing the test bench and environment scripts.

Performing cross-browser testing is not as easy as it sounds. It involves setting up different browsers, different versions, different devices, and so on, which is a burden for the team.

Maintaining browser labs is not easy because it is expensive to build and maintain infrastructure from scratch and is not affordable for all businesses. Therefore, it is recommended to adopt a cloud-based testing infrastructure, providing the tester with a platform to test the various browser device operating system combinations for multiple mobile and desktop devices hosted by the virtual machine.

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Here are a few aspects of the test environment setup:

• Ensure that there is a front-end running environment that can be load tested to check its ability to handle high-load Web traffic.
• Sometimes, a test environment setup does not provide data similar to production data, making the product vulnerable to any code changes in the production environment.
• The list of all systems, modules, and applications to be tested should be maintained and checked.
• Test as many browsers and their versions as possible.
• Test across multiple client operating systems.
• A separate database server is required for the staging environment.
• Make sure to test your web application under different network conditions to understand actual website render times and overall appearance.
• Maintaining user manuals, installation guides, and other documentation in a central database is also key to setting up a test environment for future needs.

5. Test Scripts and Execution

After configuring the test environment settings, the next step is to execute the test script. Testers should consider the following points before developing test scripts:

• Create scripts based on project requirements.
• Use a currency approach throughout the process.
• Make sure scripts are reusable, simple, and structured so that anyone can understand them.
• Perform proper code reviews and reporting to gain better insights and maintain quality throughout the process.

After the script development is complete, you need to keep the following points in mind to ensure that the script is barrier-free:

• According to the test cases, they should include all functional aspects.
• They should cover all platforms and environments that execute test scripts.
• They must be processed in batches to save time and effort.
• Always practice writing error reports, preventing any functional errors.

Evaluate and document test results for further reference, and create test results documentation in this part of the ATLC.

6. Test Analysis and Reporting

It is the last and most critical phase of the Automation Test Life Cycle, and it does not help save data without analysis. After capturing all the test results, the test team performs all kinds of tests and analyzes and identifies the functionality in question. These reports help understand whether the team needs additional procedures and offer information about the different errors encountered. Prepare a detailed lecture and share it with stakeholders, customers, employees, and the team critical to the project at this stage. These reports are essential to understanding the behavior of a Web application in adverse situations.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that software automation testing is an indispensable part of SDLC and one of the most effective ways to achieve testing goals. But software testing also has its own set of phases that must be followed carefully to obtain the benefits of this technique. It allows using any available resources to achieve the test goal within the stipulated time. Following every step of the Automation Testing, the Life Cycle helps achieve the best results without any manual intervention and reduces budgets and timelines. A well-planned Automation testing Life Cycle leads to successful automated testing.