Test automation challenges and how to manage them

Software testing is a critical part of the software development life cycle (SDLC) for successful teams. As the AWS guide on the SDLC explains about testing: ”Quality analysis includes testing the software for errors and checking if it meets customer requirements. Because many teams immediately test the code they write, the testing phase often runs parallel to the development phase.” While every testing plan should include both manual and automated tests, testing while you develop new features happens best when you automate as many tests as possible.

Getting started with automation has some challenges, such as technical, organizational, and strategical. However, there are tactics for addressing these challenges within your organization. Introduction to test automation

Software test automation is any situation where your team uses a tool to automate running a suite of software tests. For many teams, test automation comes along with an automated build system, like a CI/CD pipeline. It is not a requirement to run automated tests during the build process, but many web development teams, for instance, will run automated UI tests on a daily cadence on a publicly accessible staging website, instead of running them during the build pipeline.

Regardless of approach, automated tests are a critical part of the SDLC across teams. Modern software applications are complicated and constantly changing. Testing ensures that new developments don’t break existing functionality, meet customer requirements, and are stable additions to your codebase.

Technical challenges

Adopting an automated testing approach comes with a string of technical challenges. None of those challenges are insurmountable. Software teams around the world have overcome those challenges to develop high-quality automated test systems.

Balancing between automated and manual tests

The most common challenge that organizations face is finding a balance between automated and manual tests.

Many teams that adopt test automation make a mistake by switching all of their testing to automated testing. There are many types of tests that work well to run automatically, but not all tests work well automatically.

One classic type is exploratory or discovery testing, which Atlassian defines as using the “guidance of the individual tester to uncover defects that are not easily covered in the scope of other tests.” Adopting automated tests requires a lot of technical investment, and teams assume that they’ll pay back that investment by cutting out manual testing. But including manual testing in your testing portfolio gives your team the opportunity to catch missing bugs that the automation might not catch.

Significant investment of resources

Another major technical challenge is the fact that adopting automated tests requires a lot of work from your engineering team. Software such as Tricentis Tosca will cut down the time and effort you need to invest to get automated tests running.

But your organization knows your applications the best. Infrastructure is only part of the equation. You still need to design your tests and integrate your automatic test runs into your build processes.

Organizational challenges

When you adopt automated tests, you don’t face only technical challenges. Often, the most challenging changes involve organizational problems. You can solve every technical problem and still fail to roll out automated testing if you don’t overcome common organizational challenges.

Resistance to change

Resistance to change is a challenge that usually manifests in the management and executive levels. Most developers get on board with automated tests quickly, as they understand this will be efficient in their day-to-day testing process.

Automated tests help eliminate those kinds of failure states. But they introduce a new one: not shipping because you haven’t tested. This is the issue with changing to automation for executives, who often like to cram as many features as they possibly can into releases.

Whenever these features are “done,” executives want to release them as quickly as possible. Writing and executing tests usually isn’t a part of their mentality. But an automated testing system with no tests doesn’t serve any purpose.

Lack of testing skill

The most common concern about adopting automated tests is that developers don’t know how to write good tests.

Automated testing systems are only as valuable as the tests they execute, so if you don’t have developers who are ready to write good tests, your rollout won’t achieve your goals.

Strategy and planning challenges

Strategy challenges are a bit of a mix between organizational challenges and technical challenges. They challenge both the effectiveness of your technical solution as well as the skills of the team implementing it.

Prioritizing automation efforts

This is like the issue of resisting change. As we’ve mentioned a few times, scaling up automated testing requires a lot of engineering investment. Weeks that you spend configuring and troubleshooting a continuous integration pipeline are weeks that you don’t spend developing new features.

Proponents of automated testing argue that those investments pay off with faster and more stable features down the line. Most software teams believe that those arguments are right. But in the short term, those investments can feel wasteful, especially for people who are skeptical of the long-term benefits of automated testing.

Designing effective test cases

As we noted earlier, your automated testing system is only as good as the tests it executes. Many developers feel apprehensive about writing good tests, but that concern is also about designing good tests. Developers often excel at writing unit tests, but struggle with designing things like integration or functional tests. And none of that gets into more advanced forms of testing like performance testing.

While there are benefits to automating any kind of test, automating an extensive suite provides more benefits than automating just a few tests.

Addressing test automation challenges

We’ve talked a lot about challenges to automating tests in this post. But there are a few simple strategies you can deploy to avoid many of the pitfalls and reap the benefits of test automation.

So, gaining the real benefits from test automation require that your team buys into the journey. You need to do this at every level—developers, testers, and management.

Get buy-in early

The benefits that you gain from automating tests take a while to show and aren’t overwhelming when they do show up. Gaining the real benefits from test automation require that your team buys into the journey. This needs to happen at every level—developers, testers, and management.

Train developers and testers

Training your technical staff to design and write effective tests is a part of the process to achieve automated testing in your organization. This might look like structured training, or it might be as simple as cross-training staff and relying on your experienced technicians.

The most difficult part of your automation adoption process is the beginning: the training and buy-in

As your technicians gain experience in your new paradigm, your employees will naturally grow their skills through regular work.

Find the right tools

We’ve talked a lot about the technical investment in automating tests.. Finding the right tool to help automate your tests takes a lot of work off your plate. That’s where a tool like Tricentis Test Automation solutions helps save your team a lot of time. That means that you can focus on the other challenges that face your team, like training your developers and building consensus around your testing strategy. Test automation challenges don’t need to derail your test plan. Tricentis can help.

Test automation challenges are worth tackling

We’ve talked a lot about the different test automation challenges your team might face. These challenges can make test automation seem daunting. But the rewards that you reap are worth the investment. Tests that you don’t execute are no more valuable than tests that don’t exist at all. So, automating your tests means that you reap the maximum value from the tests that you write. If you’re concerned with the effort involved, Tricentis test automation will give you the first leg up that you need to head toward success.

This post was written by Eric Boersma. Eric is a software developer and development manager who’s done everything from IT security in pharmaceuticals to writing intelligence software for the US government to building international development teams for non-profits. He loves to talk about the things he’s learned along the way, and he enjoys listening to and learning from others as well.