Test Automation + Agile Software Development = Faster Product Readiness

As quality initiatives shift left in an agile world, software testing teams realize that they must rely on the fast feedback of automated scenarios for continuous integration and deployment. But even when people understand test automation basics, most automation initiatives fail. There are many reasons why test automation initiatives fall short, but the main reason is a poorly designed architecture for the framework on which the automation was built.

The automation framework consists of the integration of tools, libraries, and utilities needed to interact with the system under test. It should be a neutral entity that gathers information about the application by way of the system's UI, web services, business logic, databases, and so on. Automated tests are scripted scenarios that drive the framework to query the application through a series of steps, and then use the information the framework gathered to determine the state of your test.

Test automation is living, breathing code, and is developed to provide sanity checks for ever-changing production code. When viewed in that context, it is obvious that test automation code must be reliable, and therefore should be developed with a comparable standard to that which is being shipped.  

In addition to being reliable, automation frameworks should also be flexible, and easily extendable. A framework that's only capable of user interface (UI) automation, for example, places a limit on the reach of a test and can cause slow and brittle tests.

Are you ready to introduce test automation to your organization? We guide our clients in the process of choosing the right framework matching individual needs and budgets and help with the implementation and maintenance of the framework, saving the capacities of the internal devs. If you are ready to leverage the power of agile testing in an agile product development, reach out to the ditCraft team and schedule a free consultancy call.