The Nine Steps to Success: From Manual Testing to Automated Testing

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Are you or your team currently testing manually and trying to adopt automated testing? This article will outline how small QA teams can transition from manual testing to no-code testing to fully automated testing. This transition will not be achieved overnight, but it will be easier to succeed than expected.

1. Say No to Monotonically Repeated Manual Testing

A willingness to say no to monotonous, repetitive manual testing is the first step toward automated testing. As a testing team, it is necessary to admit that manual testing is often plagued by reproducibility and prone to mistakes. Any team ends up stuck doing the same thing again and again, thus affecting the efficiency and motivation of the team. Some teams will overcome this challenge by automating small pieces of repetitive work. For example, include a script that imports test data into a database and a utility that generates random test data.

2. Understand the Barriers to Switch to Automated Testing

Once it is confirmed that the team needs to move to automated testing, the next step is to know what prevents the team from making this change. In most cases, this obstacle is the fear of the complexity involved in automation, such as learning programming. It is easy to think, "can we learn a new programming language and implement a successful test automation project?" Such questions. The team should start small and choose the right tools for their testing needs. For example, suppose the team's application uses a lot of iframes. In that case, you need to consider before choosing a tool that doesn't work well with iframes or the test team does not have any automation experience, build an automated test framework before starting automated testing.

3. Start Small, but Make It Successful

A good beginning is a half success. Choosing simple and small test cases is very important when your team is new to automated testing. Choose test cases that you often test manually but are easy to test. Simple and small test cases are easy to automate, debug, maintain and reuse. Please don't start with those time-consuming or complex. Otherwise, it will make the opening more difficult and reduce the possibility of success. For example, start with simple test cases such as logging in and creating users.

4. Choose the Right Tools and Framework

Simplifying the process is the key to success, and it will be easier to do this by choosing a combination of tools and frameworks. Yes, you heard right! It must be a combination of tools. It isn't easy to achieve the success of automated testing by relying on a single tool. Selenium execution may become the foundation because it is the most popular and convenient tool for different programming languages. Start with a no-code testing tool built on Selenium. No-code testing tools can cover most simple to moderately complex manual tests.

ZTF automatic test tool developed by ZenTao, a domestic project management software, can well drive 8 unit test frameworks to perform the test and pass the final results back to Zentao for a unified report presentation. The ZTF opens up the gap between project management and continuous integration tools, running through the different stages of the DevOps life cycle, such as continuous integration, testing, and deployment.

5. Learn and Practice Programming

Choose the programming language your team is most familiar with. No-code tests may be able to cover most manual tests, but for complex steps or tests, you will need to write scripts. Just learning is not enough. It will help if you put your learning into practice to understand and write good code. Please remember, as a team, your goal is to ensure the quality of your software by automating repetitive manual testing.

6. Be Clear About What to Automate

The team must prioritize which tests need to be automated. The new knowledge of automated testing cannot be applied to everything - in fact, it is impossible to automate all tests, and many tests are more suitable for manual completion. Trying to automate complex and infrequently used tests is a failed formula and is not worth the team's effort. Manual and exploratory testing skills are still required whenever new features are released. Run a risk analysis to determine which parts of the application should be automated. In addition, you need to pay attention to some details. For example, if the application is web-based, you must create a list of critical browsers and devices for a specific test suite.

7. Zero Tolerance to Unreliable Automated Tests

Just as you are a manual tester, you should refuse to be satisfied with failed tests and should not tolerate automated tests that sometimes pass. Unreliable testing will cause the team to lose confidence and is a stepping stone to failure. For example, if a failure occurs in the initial step of a lengthy test case, it is impossible to determine whether there are no errors outside that step. Such uncertainty will not help boost team morale and make the whole automation process easy and effective.

8. Don't Ignore Team Collaboration

A collaborative team guarantees the success of any project. Automated testing is no exception. All test teams must be in one accessible repository anytime, anywhere. For traceability and accountability, a change record indicating who made changes to which test case should always exist. The tool you choose should allow collaboration and make it easier for you to classify, tag, sort, and filter the more than 100 tests you will create over time.

9. Basic Work Should Be Done Well

Don't forget the basic principle of testing. Whether a manual or automatic test, the test concept and basic principle always apply.

Automated testing can be daunting initially, but what it takes is a consistent effort to make it successful. Using resources to keep learning and practising will help. You can rest assured that experts don't know everything. No matter how excellent an automated test engineer is, there is always more to learn.