Implementing an efficient and effective test automation strategy is essential for any organization that wants to maximize the success of its software delivery operations. By helping to streamline software testing in a systematic way, test automation strategies serve as one of the pillars that ensure teams can deliver high-quality applications on a reliable basis.
That said, developing a test automation strategy can be challenging. There are many test automation practices and tools to choose from, plus many challenges to navigate.
We’ll start by defining what a test automation strategy is, then discuss how to design and implement a test automation operation that can scale with your development needs. Then, we’ll offer tips on overcoming the challenges you're likely to encounter as you create a test automation strategy.
What is a Test Automation Strategy?
A test automation strategy defines the approach you will use to implement test automation so that it drives your business objectives. The purpose of testing is managing risk, and there’s no better way to do that than to ensure your software is delivered on time, under budget, and with high quality. A test automation strategy, therefore, helps your entire business to meet your goals. In the end, it’s a collection of processes, tools, and approaches teams use to manage automated tests.
Automated testing uses automated software tools to test the quality, reliability, performance, security, accessibility, or other aspects of a software application. It’s different from manual testing, where people click buttons or enter data to evaluate whether an application responds as expected.
With test automation, robots do the work! You create scripts with testing tool (e.g. Selenium, Appium, Postman, etc), which will execute these tests much more quickly, and at any hour of the day or night. These tests can be reused any number of times, executed in parallel, and on different test platforms (Chrome/Firefox for web, iOS/Android for mobile). Incorporating these tests into the Continuous Integration/Deployment process your developers use to release software, you can run hundreds, thousands, or even millions of tests in a fraction of the time and effort.
A good strategy lays out how your team approaches automated testing.
Which aspects of the software are most important to the business?
What order they should be tested?
What “level” of testing will give you the highest confidence, with the lowest effort, that your feature will delight your users?
A test automation strategy then serves as a guide that engineers within your organization can turn to implementing test automation.
Why is a Test Automation Strategy Important?
Without a test automation strategy, you end up with ad hoc test automation practices that won’t be consistent or predictable. You won’t be able to quantify what you're testing, or when, or how. Or Why. Different teams will use different tools, making it hard to approach testing in a consistent way across the organization. Worse yet, your engineers may cycle through multiple testing tools, wasting time by constantly rewriting tests.
You also have a succession problem: only particular individuals will understand how automated tests run. Once those engineers leave the team, no one else will know how to manage the automated tests, and they’ll likely just end up being deleted.
A test automation strategy solves these challenges by offering many benefits:
Consistency: All engineers across all teams within your organization benefit when automated testing tools are shared. Everyone has confidence that all applications built by the organization are held to the same testing standards. People can also move from team to team without having to learn a whole new stack.
Efficiency: An effective strategy means that teams can reuse tests more often or adapt existing tests to fit new testing needs. This saves time and effort, which in turn increases the productivity of engineers.
Effective change management: In the event that you do need to make changes to your testing operations – for example, if you decide you want to move to a new testing tool – a test automation strategy helps to ensure that you approach the change in a structured, predictable way.
Realistic use of resources: Most businesses lack the resources to automate the tests they’d like. A strategy helps your team approach this in a realistic and pragmatic way, and allows them to make use of automation where it matters most. You can also avoid rabbit holes on low-priority tests or on tests that are difficult to automate.
How to Create a Test Automation Strategy, Step-By-Step
Let's look at the process for implementing a test automation strategy.
Step 0: Understand the Business You’re In
Testing is all about context. Risk needs to be balanced with the need for Coverage, and your test strategy needs to account for different release cadences and tolerances for changes in priority. Your business may need to make sure the UI is consistent and delightful because your product is very easy to leave for the competition (e.g. a retail app). On the other hand, you may offer an app that people are required to use (e.g. health insurance or government).
Applying the needs of your business is crucial to understanding how to test your product. You can’t simply automate everything, and you can’t really even automate most of it. You also want to deliver profound value, and quickly. Asking questions about the business (from executives, product owners, and customers) will guide you as you develop your strategy.
Step 1: Choose the Right Tests to Automate
As noted above, not every test can or should be automated. There isn’t enough time. Plus, some tests can't be performed automatically. You'll need to decide which tests to automate. Here are some starting criteria:
They need to be run frequently.
They evaluate functionality critical to the business.
They are repeatable, and produce predictable results.
They take a long time to perform manually.
Once you’ve selected the right tests, you’ll want to decide the right order to implement them in. One the 2x2 matrix below, you have two scales: “priority”, and “ease of automation”. Plot your test cases on this matrix, and then write the test cases starting with quadrant IV, then proceeding in descending order.
Step 2: Select Your Test Automation Tools and Frameworks
There are many test automation tools and frameworks available today. Popular free or open source options include:
Selenium, for browser - Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, C#
Appium, for mobile (web and native app) - Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, C#
WebDriverIO, for web and mobile tests - JavaScript
XCUITest, for iOS testing (comes with XCode) - Swift or Objective-C
Espresso, for Android mobile testing (comes with Android Studio) - Java or Kotlin
You can also find many commercial testing frameworks on the market.
If your organization develops multiple apps, you may have to adopt multiple testing frameworks.
Although many testing tools are free to use, there may be indirect costs associated with writing tests for them, especially if your engineers are not already familiar with the tool or language. Commercial testing frameworks tend to be more user-friendly to set up, but they come with a potentially hefty price tag.
You should also assess how well your testing framework can integrate with other software development tools you use. Ideally, you'll be able to integrate your testing tools tightly into your CI/CD pipelines so that your build processes can trigger automated tests on a recurring basis, with little or no manual input required.
Finally, research the performance of any testing frameworks or tools you are considering. It would be incorrect to say that any particular framework is the fastest because many factors influence how long tests take to run, and a framework that is fast for some testing scenarios could be slow for others.
Step 3: Decide When and How to Test
Once you know which tests you want to automate and which tools and frameworks you will use to automate them, it's time to establish guidelines for how and when you'll test.
One common method is to run each automated test once during every application release cycle. This entails running each automated test once prior to deployment. However, there may be some tests that are too time-consuming or resource-intensive to run every release cycle. In that case, you might decide to run certain tests only for major application releases and not when you've made minor changes.
In recent years, many teams have adopted a shift-left testing strategy, which involves running some tests earlier in the release cycle. Shift-left testing helps teams detect issues earlier when they are simpler and less costly to rectify. This depends on your team’s skill set and willingness to change, but can be beneficial to any automation effort.
Step 4: Scale Your Test Automation Strategy
Your test automation needs will change over time. The strategy that meets your needs today may not work in the future when your applications and testing needs evolve. It's important to think about how you'll scale your test automation strategy. Consider factors such as:
Adding tests as the product evolves.
Adapting to new technological challenges in both the product and testing needs
Identifying ways to make tests faster and more repeatable.
Monitoring your system to identify challenges in your automated testing strategy (failure rates, long execution times, test relevance, etc).
When you have answers to questions like these, you can maintain and update your strategy on an ongoing basis.
Challenges and Pitfalls to Avoid
Implementing a test automation strategy can be complicated. There are many choices you'll have to make and many unexpected problems you can run into.
Common challenges of test automation include:
Insufficient test infrastructure: Difficulty in acquiring, managing, and scaling test infrastructure can slow down automated testing processes.
High failure rates: If automated tests frequently fail, your application release cycle will slow down and your developers will have to spend a lot of time chasing bugs. It’s important that your tooling choices give you insights into why your tests fail, not just logs and videos.
Slow test execution: Your development process can also slow down due to poorly written tests that take a long time or don’t run in parallel. Insufficient test infrastructure can also delay test execution because your tests don't have enough resources to run efficiently.
Using the wrong tools: Sometimes, you start your automated testing strategy based on certain tools that turn out not to be the best solutions. This is where it’s important to understand your tools as well as your teams’ skills.
To avoid these challenges, consider adopting automated testing best practices like the following:
Use cloud-based, managed test infrastructure, which provides access to virtually unlimited resources for running tests without you having to lift a finger.
Run tests in parallel. This will significantly increase the rate at which tests run.
Implement a triage process for test failures. Some failures will necessitate a pause in application delivery, and some are minor enough to ignore.
Be open to change. The best test automation strategy is one that can evolve over time, allowing you to adopt different tools and testing methods.
Take Your Test Strategy Further
A test automation strategy lays the foundation for consistent, efficient testing across your organization. As such, developing a test automation strategy requires careful consideration of a range of factors, such as which tests to automate, which frameworks and tools to use, how to run tests, and how to scale your testing operations over time.
When you factor these considerations into your overall testing strategy, you get an approach that can significantly reduce the time and effort your teams spend on testing while also improving the quality of your software thanks to reliable tests. Sauce Labs can help make your test automation strategy even better with our all-in-one continuous testing platform.
