Monday, June 28, 2021

Myths of Script less automation

 

Before we discuss about Scriptless automation, we want the Automation challenges to be understood in broader view. When testing industry has caught the opensource wave, Selenium supported by Google has gained prominence. Automation with Selenium has provided engineers powerful capabilities with both forward and backwards integration with Unit testing and BDD plugins. How ever the scripts took time to Develop and changes in application needed scripts to be updated.



 To decrease amount of time spent in Automation development and maintenance work, the commercial tool vendors have re-oriented their offerings towards ‘Record and Play back’ activities that are easy for Business Analysts to create and move towards “Script less automation”. Tools like Tosca, Accel Q, UI path ( Robotic Process Automation), UFT etc, are successful at various levels. I want to demyth some facts about scrip less automation.

Myths about Script less testing

Reality

POV

There is No script, everyone can create automation

User friendly framework for Naive users. However, Automation needs to grow organically from within your environment integrating Business and Operational logic step by step until it gets to a point where no further scripting is needed

For Hybrid Objects and Lengthy E2E Automation scenarios, you will still need to script few areas.

Complex / Hybrid integrations need careful Framework   architecture.

 

 

Everything can be recorded and Played back

The user will have to depend on recorded scripts that were initially created with test data and not with actual live scenario data. 

For Highly Dynamic data, where workflows changes with data inputs, you need to intervene and customize

There will be No Test Maintenance

As more functionality gets added and as more functionality is fine-tuned. The tool will not know what is updated and will identify new changes as bugs and tests will fail.

With no scripts too, you need to know what changed at feature level and at workflow level to make changes to automation.

 

Changes are not needed for scripts. For region specific workflows, tool will automatically update

As complexity is shifted to configurations, you need thorough understanding of configurations and it will take time to change configurations.

Wrong and poor application of configurations can lead to test failure

In traditional scripting, you need to spend considerable time in updating code. However, this is reduced as time is spent on configurations.

 

Automation architects are not needed

 Scripless  is in no way implies the absence of scripting. It is an optimized process of creating a testing framework that allows your testers to develop new test cases with reusable scripts.

As business or operational scope expands, need for new components will rise and automation architects are needed to integrate them.

 

While commercial script less tools can reduce some of the challenges even in scrip less automation testing you still need to develop automation and apply best practices like.

  1. -          Modularity
  2. -          Have right Structure and create core components
  3. -          Identify and segregate Business functions, Data and configurations so maintenance is easy
  4. -          Engauge Business users early and frequently in Development.