If you’re wondering how to implement automated testing, this is the right article for you. Before we get into the details, let’s quickly review the importance of automated tests.
Automated Testing Overview
When it comes to testing, you can choose to do it manually, automated, or a mix of both. By incorporating automated tests into your software development process, you can ensure the following:
- No regressions: when deploying code, you can be confident that features currently working on the app won’t stop working. Your team will keep making progress with less to worry about issues leaking to production.
- Faster development: in a similar fashion, changes in your code are verified to be working for both pre-existing and newly added features that are covered by tests. Your team will build and deploy code faster without having to spend a bunch of time reviewing their code.
You’ll notice a running theme; Automated tests help reduce errors that make it to production and as a result, greatly improve the development cycle.
Implementing an Automated Testing Strategy
Now it’s time to dive into implementing automated testing. The first thing you’ll need to do is to consider a strategy for it. After all, there’s no execution without strategy and planning.
Consider the following testing strategies:
Form a team: One of the most setup for a team is to have a dedicated QA (quality assurance) and/or SDET (software development engineer in test) personnel within your project/organization.
- The QA personnel mostly focuses on the manual part of tests, if the existence of manual tests makes sense for the project. There are parts of the application that require manual testing, such as the business logic. The QA personnel would focus only on the features that are ready for testing.
- The SDET personnel focuses on supporting the technical side. They design, develop and maintain all the automated test setups and test cases. They have to be thorough when designing the test cases and must consider edge cases that are critical to functionality. This team doesn’t necessarily need to be a separate/dedicated team, and can be your development team. In this approach, each developer receives faster feedback on whether the code they are writing works as specified, without having to wait for a separate test team to write the tests.
Maintain the testing momentum: Beyond the initial SDET work, your development team must continue to build out tests for new features and functionality. In doing so, your team will maintain good test coverage, ensuring a shortened QA cycle.
Ensure Adequate Test Coverage: Automated tests are a vital tool for any development team. However, it’s not always critical to get 100% of the code tested. We find that 80% of the core functionality is a healthy balance between automated and manual testing
Determine when to switch from manual to automated testing: For small enough projects that are less frequently updated/released after their initial release, you may want to go with the simpler testing strategy of doing manual QA on each release. The amount of effort to automate the testing may not be worth the upfront costs for smaller projects.
Consider the Frequency of Releases: When your project gets larger or has faster release cycles, it becomes increasingly time-consuming for manual QA, and for development. You’ll waste a lot of time with manual QA as your application becomes complex. At some point, you may even find that it’s impossible to QA manually!
Executing Automated Testing
With the above in mind, it’s time to execute your test strategy. Have peace of mind, especially in high-risk industries like health and finance, and consider an expert team like Uplancer to bring your automated testing to life. As your test integration partner, we’ll implement continuous testing into your CI/CD pipeline. We’ll also set up the full CI/CD pipelines in AWS CodePipeline and github actions to handle full application testing, packaging, and deploying.
The Bottom Line
Automated tests can benefit your development team. Make sure your team has dedicated some of their time to laying the strategy framework. Consider your team, your project scope, your project size, and test coverage when building out your implementation strategy.
Unsure whether you’re on the right track? Reach out to one of our team members below for a free consultation on your current standing. We’ll set up end-to-end tests to test your application and website in simulated browser environments. We’ll also set up automated Google SEO and website performance tests in your CI/CD using Lighthouse. Connect with us today.
