Full Automation Testing

Introduction: End-to-end testing is a process used to test an application’s behaviour on different platforms and browsers. End-to-end testing helps ensure that an application works as expected across all platforms, browsers, and devices. It can also be used to validate changes made during development so that they’re not lost during deployment. Introduction to end-to-end test automation End-to-end testing is the process of testing a Web App from start to finish. It involves running all the code, in order, and making sure that it works as expected across different browsers, platforms and devices. Cross browser testing ensures that your app works on all browsers without any errors or issues. This includes mobile devices like smartphones and tablets as well as desktop computers with different operating systems (OS). End-to-end tests require you to write code for every device and OS that your users will use when they access your site or app online. This can be difficult because it involves coding each test separately depending on which platform/device you want to test against; however with Playwright we’re able to automate these tasks so they are done automatically! Challenges with existing solutions The current testing solutions available to enterprises are not flexible enough to support the needs of today’s enterprise web apps. They’re too rigid and inflexible, making it difficult for teams to implement them in a way that works best for their particular project. These existing solutions aren’t easy to use or understand: they require multiple tools, which can be confusing and time-consuming. That makes them hard for nontechnical users like business analysts or product managers who need access immediately after launch—they’ll have no idea how much time has passed since then before getting started on something else! Existing solutions aren’t cost effective: if you’re paying $100-$200 per test run with no guarantee that it will pass all tests successfully every time (and there is), then why do something so inefficient? Plus there are other costs associated with implementation such as maintenance costs down the road when things go wrong due solely because of poor testing practices by developers instead of any technical issues along those lines.”  Playwright for enterprise web apps Playwright is a browser test automation framework that enables developers to write tests for web applications. Playwright supports cross browser testing and can run tests in multiple browsers and platforms. Playwright is built on top of Selenium Webdriver, which makes it easy to write automated tests for your app or other web application. Benefits of Playwright for enterprise Web Apps Playwright is an easy to use, cloud-based solution that allows you to test your enterprise web applications from a single product. You can use it for all types of testing: functional, performance and security testing. Playwright has the following features: Single platform – The Playwright platform is the only one you need to deploy on any environment (Dev/Test/Prod). This means that you don’t have to worry about different tools or platforms for each stage in your project lifecycle. All tests are executed in parallel so there are no bottlenecks caused by slow running tests as they run on separate instances of Amazon Web Services. Flexible license terms – Our licensing model allows companies with varying budgets and needs access to our premium features at different price points based on their level of investment into quality assurance efforts. Access via DevOps toolsets such as Chef or Ansible – Make sure all your developers have access without managing servers yourself! Is Playwright right for your enterprise Web App? Playwright is a solution for end-to-end testing of enterprise web applications. It supports all browsers and platforms, including Internet Explorer 9+, Firefox 5+, Chrome 29+, Safari 6+. Playwright is easy to get started with because it provides you with everything you need to write your first test in minutes: A fast and intuitive API for creating tests (no guesswork!) A toolset that makes it easy to run your tests on real devices or emulators A library of functionalities that can be used by developers without having any programming experience The evolution of web applications Web applications have evolved from simple static websites to complex, dynamic applications that are used by millions of people. The evolution of web applications has been led by the introduction of new technologies like AJAX and HTML5. The changes in these technologies have created an environment where it is now possible for developers to build rich user experiences using client-side frameworks like AngularJS or ReactJS. These frameworks allow you to write code once but run it on multiple browsers at once! Web applications today are much more powerful than ever before. Before you can start building your next web app, you need to understand how the end-to-end testing process works. Web applications today are much more complex than ever before. They’re also much more powerful and interactive than they were even a few years ago—and they’re getting even better at handling large amounts of data and responding quickly to user requests. This makes it difficult for developers and testers alike to determine whether their apps are working correctly across various devices and browsers (or even multiple versions). End-to-end testing is essential for these apps to ensure that they work as expected across all browsers on every platform. End-to-end testing ensures that the application works as expected across all browsers on every platform. Need for cross browser support for testing and development We need cross browser support for testing and development. Most developers use multiple browsers to test their applications, but end users also use different browsers depending on what device they’re using (e.g., desktop vs mobile). Also, some browsers are more popular than others in some regions or countries. There are many factors that can affect whether a browser has good support for features like HTML5 or CSS3: Popularity of the platform as measured by market share or usage on devices; The level of support from vendors like Microsoft, Apple and Google; Whether the vendor provides proprietary extensions for

Introduction: E-commerce applications need to be active at all times to meet the needs of increasingly demanding customers. This means that the software development process for such applications has to be able to handle constant change and churn in a timely manner. One of the biggest challenges in continuously delivering quality software is ensuring that the testing process can keep up with the pace of development. This is where automation tools come in.  Though there are hundreds of commercial and open source automation platforms are available in the market today, In this article, we are going to discuss how a selenium based hybrid framework can be used to enable continuous testing  in the development and maintenance of an e-commerce application.  Common challenges in testing an E-commerce application   Web applications are under immense pressure to offer a streamlined and satisfying digital customer experience while ensuring the quality of their product. In order to achieve this, they must use shift-left and enable continuous testing throughout the software development life-cycle. However, this is easier said than done. Many e-commerce applications are complex, with a hybrid architecture that consists of both legacy and modern components. This can make it difficult to set up a continuous testing framework that covers the entire application.  Considering hybrid selenium based framework  A typical hybrid framework is a combination of both Data-Driven and Key-word driven framework that has been built on top of selenium. Selenium is an open-source popular web-based automation tool. It supports popular browsers like Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, works on all major OS and its scripts are written in various languages i.e. Java, Python, JavaScript, C#. This framework is basically code structure that makes code maintenance easy and efficient. Using hybrid framework leads to increased code reusability, higher portability, reduced cost of script maintenance, and better code readability. It is based on the principle of shift-left testing, which means that tests are run as early as possible in the software development process.  Why hybrid framework is necessary for e-commerce applications?  Hybrid framework is particularly well-suited for testing web applications built using the Selenium tool and available for use with a number of popular Continuous Integration (CI) tools, such as Jenkins. Enables Continuous testing for e-commerce applications. It helps to ensure the quality of the product, prevent production issues, and reduce the need for regression testing. By using it, e-commerce organizations can easily set up a continuous testing framework that covers the entire application.  A hybrid framework allows testers to choose the most appropriate tools and techniques for different testing tasks. This can be particularly useful for e-commerce applications, which may have a wide range of features and functionalities that need to be tested and can help reduce the time & effort required to test the application that need to be released on tight timelines.  Steps to enable hybrid framework for continuous testing of an e-commerce applications:  Set up a continuous integration (CI) server: A CI server is a tool that automatically builds and tests your application every time you push code changes to version control. This helps you catch bugs and other issues early in the development process.  Choose a testing framework: There are various testing frameworks available for different programming languages. Some popular options include JUnit for Java, PyTest for Python and Mocha for JavaScript. Choose a framework that is well-suited to your application and the language you are using.  Write test cases: Test cases are the individual tests that your testing framework will run. They should cover a range of scenarios and test the different features of your application. You should aim to have a good balance of unit tests, which test individual components of your application, and integration tests, which test how those components work together.  Set up test automation: Once you have written your test cases, you can automate them using your CI server. This means that every time you push code changes, the CI server will run your tests automatically to ensure that the code is working as expected.  Monitor test results: As your tests run, you should monitor the results to see which tests are passing and which are failing. This will help you to identify any issues with your code and fix them quickly.  By following these steps, you can set up a hybrid framework for continuous testing of e-commerce applications and ensure that it is working correctly.  Some more additional points:  Framework was designed to accelerate the test automation.  Most importantly, you need to develop a test plan that identifies the key functionalities of the e-commerce application that need to be tested continuously. These could include checkout, payment processing, order tracking, and user account management, among others. Additionally, it should map the testing resources so that the framework can be utilized efficiently.  Create positive and negative test scenarios with multiple test data to obtain maximum coverage.  With framework one can complete tests faster, which is essential in a field where customers need top-notch software that runs quickly.  It helps in implementing Continuous Integration (such as Jenkins) to check the build quality as soon as any change is made to the code.  Jenkins keeps track of results and displays them as a trend graph. This provides a clearer picture of how previous tests have performed.  Using framework, you can set up to automatically record results and share them with the team once tests are completed.  It ensures the tests are executed more consistently by automated tests.  Regularly review and update the testing process to ensure that it is effective and efficient.  However, some e-commerce web applications can be difficult to automate due to their dynamic nature. They change their content and functionality based on the user’s actions, so it’s hard to test them in the same way you would do for traditional web pages or apps.  There are several challenges involved in automating dynamic web applications. Some challenges include:  Identifying the elements on the page  Navigation across pages  Form submission  Handling popup windows  Waiting for page

Introduction: A web application has not limited itself to work always within the web. Sometimes there is a need for interaction of the web with the local system for uploading and downloading files. Automating this type of workflow is a bit complex with Selenium as the scope of Selenium is limited within the web.  Let’s learn how AutoIt helps in enabling 100% file upload and download in Selenium. Business case Our client has a background remover application, that uses AI to remove the background and reduce editing time which will help the users to add or remove the background of an image if they want to. Challenges for optimization of testing Every release requires testing, and manual testing was time-consuming. The team has recently implemented an agile process, where the functionality is changing frequently which is a challenge for optimizing the whole testing process. Our automation testing approach Automation helped the customer to verify/test different types of files within a short period. QA team developed a test plan by integrating Selenium with AutoIt Platform for uploading the image from the local system and validating its result. Automation helped the team complete tests faster, reducing overall testing efforts by 25%. Using our internal Selenium-based hybrid framework, we provided the results and records in well-documented formats. We implemented shift-left by integrating the testing environment with Jenkins. Testing Tools used Selenium: We used Selenium as it is an open-source automation testing tool to demonstrate web applications across different browsers and platforms. A wide range of programming languages like Java, Python, Ruby, c#, R-Data, PHP, Perl, etc are supported by Selenium. It supports a variety of operating systems—Windows, Mac, or Linux and browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari, or Opera.  Selenium can be integrated with tools such as TestNG and JUnit for managing test cases and generating reports. It is integrated with Maven, Jenkins, and Docker to achieve continuous testing. Selenium focuses on automating web-based applications. Need for third-party tool in Selenium A web application is not limited to functioning entirely within the web. Sometimes, there is a need for the website to interact with the local system for the uploading and downloading of files. Automating this type of workflow can be complex with Selenium, as Selenium’s scope is limited to within the web browser itself. If you need to automate a workflow that will go from the browser to the desktop and from the desktop to Selenium, then the AutoIt tool may be a solution to your problem. What is AutoIt? AutoIt is an open-source scripting language that is designed for automating windows GUI and general scripting. It is a fusion of mouse movement, simulated keystrokes, and window control manipulation to automate a task that is not possible by the selenium Web driver. AutoIt is also very small, self-contained, and will run on all versions of Windows out-of-the-box with no annoying “runtimes” required! An AutoIt automation script can be converted into a compressed, stand-alone executable that can be run on computers even if they do not have the AutoIt interpreter installed. Language used Java: All are very familiar with the term “Java”. It is a high-level, class-based, object-oriented programming language that is designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. Most developers use java for coding web applications. It has been a popular choice among IT Professionals for over two decades, with millions of Java applications in use today. It is owned by Oracle, and it is used by more than 3 billion devices. Java is a multi-platform and network-centric language that can be used as a platform in itself. It is a fast, secure, reliable programming language for coding everything from mobile apps and enterprise software to big data applications and server-side technologies. In the current job market, the demand for java is significant. Java applications are typically compiled to byte code that can run on any Java virtual machine (JVM) regardless of the underlying computer architecture. The syntax of Java is similar to C and C++ but has fewer low-level facilities than either of them. The Java runtime provides dynamic capabilities (such as reflection and runtime code modification) that are typically not available in traditional compiled languages. What is TestNG?  TestNG is an open-source test automation framework for Java. It is developed on the same lines as JUnit and NUnit. A few advanced and useful features provided by TestNG make it a more robust framework than its peers. The NG in TestNG stands for ‘Next Generation. Created by Cedric Beust, it is used more frequently by developers and testers in test case creation, owing to its ease of using multiple annotations, grouping, dependencies, prioritization, and parameterization features. Using TestNG, you can generate a proper report, and you can easily come to know how many test cases are passed, failed, and skipped. You can execute the failed test cases separately. Why use TestNG in Selenium? By default, Selenium tests do not generate a proper format for the test results. Using TestNG in Selenium, we can generate test results. Feature of TestNG Multiple Before and After annotation options XML-based test configuration Dependent methods Groups/groups of groups Data-driven testing Multithreaded execution Better reporting key benefits With Selenium-based hybrid framework and use of reusable methods, allowed the QA Team to reduce the automation effort by 25%. 40% reduction of the overall testing cost. CI and CD with test automation helped to identify errors and defects. Provides improved accuracy by around 96% Reduces the time by 50%.  Results In recent times, the web GUI has become so much more complex with the integration of several native third-party elements which makes it challenging for the test automation engineers to achieve 100% automation coverage. This problem statement needs a QA org to invest more by procuring additional third-party platforms that can ensure better automation coverage. Using an open-source platform like Selenium, the above automation approach (AutoIT integrated with Selenium) has helped our team to improve the overall project quality and reduce the cost and time as well. The result was a

Introduction: Do you know the present century is totally dependent on technologies and specifically in IT or Digital fields rapid changes are taking place in form of new concepts and practices? DevOps has been proven to be critical in speeding up the Software development life cycle in recent past and has been continuously gaining popularity globally. Patrick Debois in 2009, adopted DevOps process for the first time and started seeing the improvements with respect to the traditional software development challenges. What is DevOps? DevOps stands for a portmanteau of “Development” and “Operation”. DevOps is a combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and kits that increase an organization’s capability to deliver applications and services in very highly demanding situations by applying continuous development and rectifying products in a faster mode than the organization’s traditional SDLC process. This process enables the organization serve a better quality product to the client. There are two loops – Handover Loop and the Feedback loop. The Handover Loop has Build, Test, and Release on the other hand the Feedback loop is having Plan & Operations. Where DevOps is used? The companies like Amazon, Target, Esty, Netflix, Google, and Walmart are using this method and as we know they are very successful organizations that are gaining improvement and delivering quality product day by day. Pillar of DevOps The pillars are the backbone of a structure and on depending those pillars the structure is made. In DevOps the pillars are  Release management Provisioning Configuring management System Integration Monitoring & operation DevOps Methodologies DevOps is the direct application of agility, which rise from the need for faster development and deployment and an increase in software development velocity. Advancements in agile development highlighted the need for a more holistic approach to the software delivery life cycle, resulting in DevOps. Here are some frameworks and some technical terms used in DevOps- Scrum – A framework in which people can get the solution for complex problems while delivering a high-end product. Kanban – Kanban is nothing but a popular framework that is used for the implementation of agile methodology along with DevOps`. Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) – It is a group of organizational and workflow patterns to implement Agile. SAFe is one of a growing number of frameworks that seek to address the problems encountered when scaling beyond a single team. Lean development – It is a translational property of lean manufacturing principles along with practices. Lean offers a conceptual framework, values, and principles, as well as best practices derived from experience, that support agile organizations. Why should go for DevOps & its practices? Nowadays, mainly in 2022, DevOps is having broad scope to make the whole process of D to D in a nominal period. D to D is nothing but Developing to Deployment and also the monitoring and operating of the software. There are a few points or trends to make the motive to go for DevOps. 1. Container adoption of the DevOps Strategy One of the factors contributing to the rise of DevOps is the growing use of container(placing a software component and its environment dependencies and configuration into an isolated unit) technologies. The use of Kubernetes and containerized services for networking, storage, and security will continue to rise. Containers are the best way to build applications which are scalable, quick changeable to add new features and solve customer issues to gain a competitive advantage. 2. Serverless computing is new approach The concept of serverless computing gives us a new and exciting approach to the installment of software and other services. Serverless computing smoothen up DevOps operations and increases architectural scalability for minimal pay. This approach is also helping coders in the replacement of workload by looking after server maintenance – system updates and cloud monitoring. 3. The Advancement of Microservices Architecture Microservices architecture is gaining popularity in the IT industry in place of traditional architecture. DevOps practices and microservices architecture make the decentralized teams innovate faster, maintaining their own technology stack and standards, organizing performance metrics, and managing the development and release cycles, and the go-to-market time is less in this development and release process.  4. The Rise of DevSecOps-new version Security is the most vital point now-a-days mainly post-pandemic era which is virtual security.  And all the enterprises are constantly running to move faster, and with this, the whole security teams are struggling with quality analysis nothing but testing. For this cause, the previous version of DevOps was not sufficient, and DevSecOps comes into the story to provide security to products. 5. The adoption of low-code applications Taking the step for a low-coding approach in DevOps practice is a game-changer for any team. The agility which is enabling low coding also provides almost all organizations a markable competitive advantage in terms of gaining speed in the demanding software market. That kind of low-coding platform allows those, who are having very minimal coding knowledge. 6. Application of artificial intelligence and machine learning in DevOps Compacting and utilizing the DevOps methodology is essential to keeping pace according to the changing workloads and environments. AI and Machine Learning can help DevOps teams enhance their performance by improving feedback loops and managing alerts. Developers can also benefit from AI and ML by referring to previous application performance and its operational metrics performance which will be recognized and analyzed, sentiment analysis, success building, and test completion.   7. Automation Automation is the backbone of each of every traditional or agile method of developing software and testing. Now at the core of DevOps strategies also following the automation. Because the speed of D-D along with Operations and Monetization will not be achieved without automating the life cycle.  All aspects of DevOps and QA must be adaptable if they are going to keep up with the ever-increasing demands of the future. Leveraging DevOps to our advantage DevOps has evolved tremendously in recent years and will continue to grow. It is rapidly moving beyond automation and powering the emerging DevOps trends such as GitOps, and Site Reliability

Do you want to become a Scriptless automation test engineer? If yes, then this article is for you. What is Scriptless Test Automation?  A Method of creating automated test scripts that do not require coding or programming skills. Testing that serves to reduce the time required for creating automated tests. Automated testing guarantees to perform testing without the requirement of code.  Let’s go a little deeper into scriptless testing and make automation simpler for testers.  Why Codeless Automated Testing is gaining popularity? In the current times of DevOps/Agile, speed continues to be the prime driver throughout the software engineering (CI/CD) process. To accelerate the test automation process, industry leaders in the Quality Engineering space often prefer testing tools and frameworks that require little-to-no code as part of the testing script development process: low-code, no-code, and codeless/scriptless. These types of testing are almost the same. The testing tools using a low-code/scriptless approach allow the test engineers/test developers to create the test scripts without any previous coding experience. Platforms that are based on coding/programming are getting outdated because of the initial time taken to develop the automation framework, the longer time to develop the scripts, and also when it comes to testing maintenance and so on. When you consider a codeless test automation platform (or any other testing tool for that matter), keep in mind that the tool will never 100% replace all your manual testing. It perfectly makes sense for some scenarios to be tested manually that need to most intelligent execution using an expert’s “human touch” due to several environmental reasons. However, there would be several types of tests that are the right candidate for codeless scripting, e.g. scenarios that are repeatedly tested and not much functionality change involved. What is the difference between Script & Scriptless Automation?  Script:  Test steps manually defined before execution.  step1->step2->step3->step4->step5…  Scriptless:  Test steps generated during test execution based on available actions. So, you can move from manual to automation with no code using scriptless and this can increase your speed and test robustness.   Scriptless test automation can help you including:  Test automation coverage scenarios. Improve Quality (enhance quality). Create stable automation. Accelerate quality delivery. No coding required/involves low coding. Thinks like the end-user(customers). Make changes to tests easily. Testing delays (You can speed up test cycles by using scriptless by enabling your business testers). Scriptless Automated Testing Methods:  NLP (natural language processing): Model-based testing Image-based scriptless Recording screenshots Drag and drop-based object mapping Keyword-driven testing Object-driven testing AI Bots for test automation.  Why do we require scriptless automation testing tools?   Test automation can’t succeed without the help of effective test automation tools. It will be more useful to know which automation testing tools are the best as per the user behavior.  To automate tests using tools instead of writing test scripts.   Reduces your time spent on test maintenance with their self-healing ML algorithm. Easy, better, and fast results (faster creation of test automation). Cut Down Costs (decreases cost). Search & Automate. Few clicks are all it takes. Built-in hybrid framework. Automated suggestions. Focus more on testing. To become a test automation engineer coding is mandatory. Right?  Suppose, you want to become a selenium test engineer then the coding is required to write the test scripts by using any programming language like python, java, or JavaScript to automate the web applications.  But if you are not good at programming language and you don’t have any scripting knowledge then the following scriptless/codeless automation testing tools are recommended.  What are the most popular automation testing tools available in the IT industry?  Today, we see a lot of new automation tools and platforms coming up where they have recorded and replay and create our entire automation test or automation project without doing any coding or very less coding required. Enlisted below are some of the automation testing tools which are helpful to automation testers.  1. Katalon Studio: It is one of the free open-source automation testing tools. It has been built with readily available features. You just need to configure the software and use it for automation. It is used to automate Web, Mobile Desktop, and API automation testing. Katalon also works with other tools like JIRA, Slack, and such.  Katalon Studio Website-https://www.katalon.com/  2. Appium: It is an open-source test automation framework for mobile web, and hybrid applications on iOS mobile, Android mobile, and windows desktop platforms. Appium is designed on a server, and the user gains access to its automation framework through a business person/dealer.  Appium Website-https://appium.io/  3.TestingWhiz: Testing Whiz is a Codeless Automation Testing Tool for Software, Web, Mobile, Database, Cloud, Web Services, and API testing. It is very helpful to provide global solutions & software companies for their web applications. We can automate the applications by using the play and record option and also drag and drop commands as well.  Testing Whiz Website-https://www.testing-whiz.com/  4. Perfecto Scriptless: We can automate the web, mobile, and AI testing web applications as well. It is completely AI-based maintenance & also supports cross-browser execution, cloud-based collaboration and schedule and monitoring, and intelligent reporting and debugging and it also supports integration software.  Perfecto Scriptless-https://www.perfecto.io/  5. Tosca: It is a license-based version. It is a software automation testing tool. We can do end-to-end software application testing. It is used for GUI, API, web application, and mobile application testing.  Tosca Website-https://www.tricentis.com/resources/tosca-automate-ui/  Conclusion: Codeless testing is evolving at a very rapid pace and there are several commercial platforms entering the market every now and then. Hence, I would recommend purchasing  a platform that is futuristic and AI powered. I would also recommend keeping substantial consideration for analytics and reporting capabilities of the scriptless testing platform, as the future is all about analytic based Dashboards, auto-healing, auto decision making abilities using the data trend and so on that takes advantage of AI/ML. I hope this article was insightful to provide some food for thought around why to consider scriptless testing platform. Will be happy to help in case you have any

Introduction: Test automation has gained much attention recently. Many of the Testers and Developers are using test automation to achieve speed and also organizations prefer automation to deliver on-time services. Automated testing can reduce testing efforts and can be seen as a replacement for manual testing. According to QA Lead “2020 Software Testing Trends: QA Technologies, Data, &Statics”( 24 Actionable Software Testing Trends and Statistics for 2020 (theqalead.com)) 78% of organizations use test automation for functional or regression testing. Its benefits include executing recurring tasks, identifying bugs quicker, precision, and non-stop feedback — all of which save time, personnel, and ultimately lead to a lower software testing budget. However, manual testing still holds a prominent place in the Quality Assurance process. Automation testing doesn’t have decision making capabilities. By making use of automated testing, testers will lose chances to improve the quality of product, while by interacting and visualizing during the testing process.  So, by using both manual testing and automated testing with different permutations and combinations will greatly improve the production quality of the software. Why choose manual testing in this age of Hyper-automation? A suite of test automation looks impressive but it can never replace a manual testing. Manual testing, is required for initial verification of system, so manual testing is required to automate and can never be replaced. From the bar chart we can say that manual testing requires less efforts to train and need less number of tools to do testing as its USP(unique selling point) compared to automation testing, but manual testing requires more resources, time and infrastructure. Coming to automation testing it requires more tools and training slightly less infrastructure compared to manual testing and need very less time and human resource. So, from this we can say that manual testing has its own advantages from automation testing. Let’s see some reasons why automated testing can’t fully replace manual testing Manual testers can quickly reproduce customer-caught errors. Automation can’t catch issues that humans aren’t aware of. Automations is too expensive for small projects. Manual testers learn more about user perspective. Humans are creative and analytical. There is a whole bunch of testing that simply must be manual. There are scenarios that can’t be automated by their nature, for example, mobile applications with a big amount of tapping interaction or captcha verifications. The key advantage of manual testing over automation is its ability to handle complex and nuanced test scenarios. This is achieved by manual creation and execution of tests. Which scenarios ‘need’ Automation? In general tests that take a lot of time and effort to perform manual testing and the scenarios which are more repeatable are most suitable for automation testing. Some of them are: Scenarios which are repeatable on each build, Eg: smoke and sanity tests Scenarios repeatable on different browsers and operating systems, Ex: Comparability Testing Tests that are impossible to perform manually, Ex: Performance testing Tests that have significant downtime between steps,  Scenarios which require multiple set of test data to validate, Ex: Data driven Test Testing non-functionality of an application, Ex: Load testing and Performance testing Test scenarios having low risk, stable codes that are not likely to change often Test scenarios that are prone to human errors Scenarios which can’t be automated? In current times humans interact with apps and products in multiple ways- broadly through touch and touch-less. Here are some examples of test cases that cannot be automated: Using the camera feature of an app to take pictures in different lighting conditions. Performing negative testing to test the reliability of the applications. (Negative mindset to break the application) Hackers are adopting newer techniques and these scenarios have to be tested manually. Applications that are touch-enabled cannot be automated. Testing external features of hardware products, embedded systems etc. Verifying whether a software product is accessible to the people having disabilities (deaf, blind, mentally disabled etc.) Exploratory Testing is completely based on human experience, instincts, and observation while exploring the app as an end-user. Ideally, nothing can compete with the human eye. It is best to perform exploratory testing using a manual approach under any given situation. Installation and setup testing system needs to test with different hardware and software such as loading CD-ROM, memory disks, and tapes. Such type of systems also require manual testing. As we can see, some tests should be performed manually. This especially relates to tests that focus on user interfaces and usability. Although we could automate literally everything, manual testing still provides an effective and quality check of bugs and improprieties. Scenarios which are expensive to automate? The Bottom Line It has been a fabulous experience so far sharing our thoughts around this topic. This article gives an overall view about why we still have manual testing despite the existence of hyper-automation. Automated testing requires coding and test maintenance, but on the plus side, it is much faster and covers many more permutations. On the other hand manual testing is slow, but since it handles more complex scenarios, it still survives in the market today. So, no matter how great test automation evolved you can’t automate everything. Manual testing is still in use and there are still cases where it is the best choice. So, it’s important to consider both manual and automation approaches while you design your QA strategy. One of the key testing principles is that 100% testing automation is impossible, manual testing is still necessary. So, the final verdict is that automation won’t replace manual, but neither will manually obviate automation. 8+

Have you ever wondered how the ongoing COVID19 pandemic has impacted the enterprises to realign their strategies for their survival in these uncertain times? Sudden fall in the customer demand led to huge impact on the financial health of the companies that forced them to be more adaptive than ever. And DevOps comes to rescue in this scenario as this is conceptualized primarily to enable an adaptive software release process while making no compromise on customer experience. Sources say by 2021, ~55% of world’s population (i.e. more than 4B) will have access to internet. There will be around ~37 billion devices (including smartphones, IOT, wearables, etc.) connected to the Internet. And yes, 5G already started finding its existence in few countries and this will be accelerated in 2021 and beyond. These numbers represent the market situation at a high-level. And thanks to the COVID19 pandemic, the world is connected digitally better than ever as everything goes virtual like online classes, working from home, webinars and so on. The above data also signifies what would be the impact if software fails due to bad design/coding, improper testing, security vulnerabilities, bad performance and so on. As per the “Software Fail Watch” report published by Tricentis in 2018, the loss due to software failure was estimated to be around USD 1.715 Trillion that impacted around 3.7 billion people worldwide. Why DevOps? Software development tasks in DevOps are continuous (coding, building, testing, etc.) because it is designed around adaptiveness and speed which are the 2 most critical factors for success. In order to start with this topic, I would like to discuss a bit around an old depiction of PPP Graph (Process, People and Product), as in the chart below: As we can see in the chart, your software product’s success is primarily dependent on broadly 2 parameters i.e. process and the people who are developing the product. The organization can achieve a better product quality by continuously improving these 2 parameters. Other competitors will also try their best to bring maturity around these 2 factors to succeed in the market.  And if you examine carefully DevOps also uses this principle at its core and yes of course, Agile plays a complementary role as well in DevOps space. And also, we need to keep in mind that modern techniques like AI/ML are influencing the ‘People’ part of the above chart specifically to bring more intelligence to the process. Shift-Left, Shift-Right And Continuous Testing Continuous testing in the build pipeline is an integral part of the overall DevOps setup that executes the testcases in parallel and I’ll explain that shortly. We are going to cover Functional testing, Performance testing and Security testing under Continuous testing. As you know “Shift-Left” is a buzz-word in DevOps which actually refers to starting QA automation tasks (like Functional testing, Performance testing and Security testing) as early as possible in the Development process. We also call it “in-sprint” automation in Agile language. Please refer to the above chart that illustrates the different pieces of Continuous Test automation process in DevOps. As you can see in the illustration, the test automation rigor starts much earlier in the life-cycle (i.e. Shift-left) and in a matured DevOps model the Metrics related to testing is collected at each phase and fed into an Analytics platform (can also be AI/ML based) for better predictability and continuous quality improvement. These tools/platforms can be integrated together so that they can smoothly talk to each other and enable touchless test executions. Also, please note that some enterprises adopt Shift-Right approach to even test their application/product in the Production environment in order to evaluate the actual behavior/performance in real-time. As the continuous code delivery matures and Agile teams compress sprint cycle, the window of testing also shrinks due to minimal or zero rework. The idea here is to have all the automation script ready before the build is available so that the test execution can start as soon as a build is deployed. This also enables adequate test executions as the work-product moves forward towards it’s final release. Let’s discuss each of these testing areas one by one. Continuous Functional Test Automation (CFTA) What is your favorite automation tool? We will discuss more about several automation tools and their special advantages in upcoming articles but now let’s try to understand how our Functional test automation tool fits in the DevOps build pipeline. As DevOps focuses on shortening the SDLC in order to release high quality software product, Continuous test automation becomes critical to the overall success for the product. And not only that, over last few years Test Automation tools evolve to become more and more smarter, autonomous and universal. This has enabled superb testing intelligence by infusing AI and ML. AI/ML techniques like Natural Language Processing (NLP) are very helpful in terms of smart recognition of objects which in turn brings additional speed to automation by minimizing the rework due to code/UI change. In this way continuous testing tools can provide quick and timely feedback on business risks through their analytics capabilities. I’ve listed few such popular commercial tools/providers that fit into your continuous test automation space: Eggplant Tricentis Parasoft Micro Focus ACCELQ mabl Broadcom Sauce Labs Perforce Software IBM FrogLogic Ranorex SmartBear Software Cyara Worksoft Experitest If you are an expert in any of these tools then it will be great to have you sharing you story in this forum. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you think you have a great story to share with our readers. Continuous Performance Testing Gone are the days of doing Performance testing much later in the SDLC i.e. after the system integration testing (SIT) and just before going live. It becomes an annoying experience when you have several critical performance issues detected during performance testing and go-live is planned just a few days after. This sometimes puts your go-live at jeopardy and the rework might be very costly as well. As Application Performance also determines success or failure of your product’s