Software testing has become a major necessity in the world of software development. The organization can detect bugs and correct them with effective automation or manual testing. Though there are many difficulties faced in automated testing and it’s never a walk in the park.
The challenges can even be worse when handling critical data. But there is always a way out of these difficulties. Thanks to the advancing technology that has revolutionized the whole process of automated testing. There are several reasons why people prefer automated testing to the manual testing approach. Tools used for automation testing enable testers to detect bugs in the early stages, which is nearly impossible with a manual testing approach. This reduces the overall cost of automated testing and saves on the resources needed for the whole process. In terms of test coverage, you can cover more test cases with automated testing than when using the manual testing approach.
Below are difficulties faced in software testing and how automated testing handles them.
Unstable Environment
An unstable environment is one of the difficulties testers face during software testing. In this case, the unstable environment disrupts most of the processes. With test cases poorly managed, the results are often in conflict, and there are lots of delays.
In the long run, the unstable environment impacts the software product’s quality and the whole process’s overall efficiency. As a result, time-to-market deadlines and costs tend to increase.
To overcome difficulties associated with the unstable environment, you need to automate the practice of formalizing the test environment requirements in the early stages of the software development life cycle. Then, you can use the formal template to capture requirements in real-time, build new environments and allocate the required resources with the matching skillset.
Poor Communication
Testers often work in complete isolation in manual testing, and there is rarely any effective communication among the team members. Communication is very vital in the case where testers are working towards a common goal. But without a cloud automation testing approach, it’s not easy to achieve collaboration.
In manual testing, testers are likely to spend a lot of time in back-and-forth emails, taking phone calls, or attending meetings to provide status updates. Poor communication largely impacts the shared understanding across the entire team and can often lead to poor insights that will often impede the project under test.
To get clear insights, open and constant communication is needed for every process within the organization. With automated testing, you can optimize the use of great tools to help the team members stay in touch with each other and update with the project updates. This means testers can access all the information they need to carry out different tests.
Undefined Quality Standards
The software product being tested will likely comply with the quality requirements only when the standards are clearly defined. Unfortunately, this is not usually the case, making the testing process a big challenge for the testers.
And this means that there is no clarity on the testing requirements, guidelines, specifications, or characteristics of the process being tested. This way, it becomes very challenging for the testers to meet the user requirements or comply with the set regulations.
Investing in automation can help a lot in dealing with undefined quality products. There is real-time reporting that allows the testers to define the standard upfronts. Thus, testers can work as per the guidelines and deliver a quality product that meets all the user requirements. Automating test cases ensures that the standards set are reliable, realistic, and can be analyzed easily.
Insufficient Requirements Gathering
Testers often find difficulties dealing with user requirements in automated and manual testing. And this wrecks the whole process. Serious consequences can result from insufficient requirements gathering and analysis. The end product of the testing process will have a lot of defects.
Sometimes, testers can even discover new requirements late in the SDLC process. If the number of missed requirements is too many, this exerts pressure on the project schedules, and the testers can be compelled to skip test cases to save time.
Automating software testing will give you more time to focus on other important processes vital for the software product’s success. Testers can focus on gathering the requirements for the next test scenarios.
Lack Of Proper Tooling To Automate At Scale
In a normal situation, testers should be able to execute tests continuously to ensure a faster release of the software product. But this is not usually the case. Most testers often struggle with low testing and a plethora of unexecuted tests. This issue is highly attributed to the lack of proper tooling to automate at scale.
Most of the traditional tools are built on legacy technologies and usually have limits on concurrent test sessions. They are also subject to slow test execution, and automating tests at scale when using these tools is very hard.
Using a modern automation test tool helps unlock the concurrency limits, increasing the process’s throughput and efficiency. You can test the compatibility of the test suite under execution against several browsers or real browsers.
