Startups have a lot on their plate when considering what processes will work best for their operations and what trends to capitalize on in order to achieve success. There are likely to be numerous roadblocks along the way, but decision-makers in this type of business must be able to overcome challenges by staying on top of emerging trends and using evolving technology to better meet user needs. As more people seek quality applications, startups should look to leverage agile testing methodologies to deploy the best products possible.

The main feature of agile software testing in start-ups is that the software testing process should be an integral part and it should not be taken as a separate phase in the software development process. In Agile development, the coding part and testing part is done incrementally and iteratively, working and creating on every feature of the software one by one until it seems reliable and provides a good amount of value in order to be released for production.

If a defect is found earlier in the software testing process, then it will be much easier and cheaper to fix that particular defect. Every startup should spend dedicated time on debugging. This is crucial in order to find some major bugs or defects and also to ask various what if question which will help them to ding any unforeseen error which might come up later on in the software.

There is no either/or here, no ‘manual’ versus ‘automated’ testing. There is only testing, and some activities in testing can be better or more efficiently performed by automated tools. Others can be done better by people manually.

Why Automation?

If a software can do anything then, why can’t a software test a software?

Test automation is a process to check the software application after development and getting new build or release. The investment for test automation is time, money and resources. In requires initial efforts which will help you whenever you want to execute the regression cases.

  • Automation testing Saves Time and Money
  • Quality is critical, but so is speed
  • Increases Speed, Efficiency, Quality and Decreases the Cost
  • A Cost-effective Method for Regression Testing
  • Testers get Motivated which increases the efficiency
  • Helpful in testing complex web application

When Automation?

Consider a scenario where the defect is fixed in the build and similar feature was used in different working modules. So it is hard to check new bug is introduced in previous working functionality. While doing test pass you need to check regression testing around the defect fixes. This testing exercise needs to be executed each and every time you need to manually test the functionality around the impacted area. So considering resources, time and money you need to work effectively and smartly. In such scenarios you need to think of Automation testing.

Tools:

Now, the question comes in everybody’s mind that many smaller organizations and startups may not have the dedicated resources to devote toward testing and QA. The challenge then becomes how you should evaluate software and ensure that it meets established standards. In the fast moving world, the Automation testing plays a vital role to achieve most of the testing goals with effective use of resources and time. However before start automating the test tasks, you should be careful about choosing automation tool. There are various tools in the market, but you have to select those which are best for your application.

The most important things to consider while selecting the right tools are:

  • The tool must be in your budget. The automation tools are really expensive. So the company should have the budget to purchase the tool. Now-a-days, Selenium Webdriver is most widely used open source automation tool in IT industry.
  • The tool must support technologies used in your application. For example, you can use selenium for your web applications, Robotium for your Android applications. Whatever the decision, this should be in your budget.
  • You must have the necessary skilled resources who can use this tool or learn that tool in less time.
  • The tool must have a good reporting mechanism to show the results to stakeholders after each execution.

Some popular automation tools are:

  • QTP : HP’s Quick Test Professional – functional testing tool which support for both Web & Desktop Applications
  •  Rational Robot : IBM tool for regression, functional testing for ERP, E-Commerce Applications
  •  Selenium: An open source automated testing suite for web applications supports mostly all browsers

Automation Testing with Selenium

There are several automation tools available in the market today but most of them are built using the Selenium framework. There are several reasons behind the growing popularity of Selenium and a few of them are given below:

  • It is an open source freeware tool that calls for zero initial investment.
  • It offers the support of a strong and active online community that posts frequent updates and also allows users to share their codes with the community.
  • It is designed to run on multiple browsers and platforms which contributes towards a wider scope of automation.
  • It offers unmatched flexibility as it supports a host of languages like PHP, Perl, Python, and Ruby, among others, even though it is built in Java.
  • It offers flexibility when it comes to reporting tools and build systems as it integrates with Qmetry, Hudson, SauceLabs, and other popular tools

Challenges

Everyone wants to achieve success as quickly as possible. In startups also, you want to release everything at ones. In reality, this is not true. They should plan carefully and give testers more than enough time to test the software or the application. Making an unrealistic schedule can be the biggest and worst problem and it will greatly affect the Quality Assurance of the software.

Unclear and changing requirements can cost so many resources and efforts to the company. This cannot be avoided as well because the requirements of the client will change the only thing startups can do is that they can adopt a methodology in which they can incorporate these changing requirements without changing the whole core of the software.

Every company uses automation tools to optimize their testing and quality assurance process. But choosing a good automation tool requires some expert knowledge and one more thing to keep in mind is that the company should not 100% rely on automation tools. Most of the startup spent a lot of resources in developing the software while the phase of Quality Assurance is given a lot less attention. So, trained resources and experience should be hired in these startups regarding Quality Assurance.

Conclusion

To make Test Automation a successful exercise, you need to select Right Automation Tools, an Expert Team and a well structured plan. You need to give proper time and efforts to development of test automation suite.

I hope you will find this information useful! Please feel free to contact us at info@menloparkworld.com for any guidance for your product development and QA needs.