Test Automation Strategy

As last topic I have mentioned: http://howtesting.blogspot.com/2014/03/what-would-be-software-testing-trends.html (What would be the Software Testing trends in the next 5 years?) Most company want to deliver higher quality in less time with fewer resources. And near future, there are multiple projects with big data and application in cloud. Need to we find strategy for long road: Test Automation Strategy

1. What we needs to be done

• Dedicated focus - Find a solution to the testing problem
• Find a long-term and cost-effective solution
• Comprehensive coverage against requirements
• Follow a "common standard" across the organization/product team/project team

2. We need to build framework or commercial tool

What have you plan when you want to build framework?

• Scope of auto work
• Auto architecture (review, evaluate, design)
• Developer (design, programming)
• Tester (should do manual test and create scripting)

Below is table that describe advantage/dis-advantage points when building framework

Advantage	Dis-Advantage
Easy to apply your project Easy to customize Utilize skills of developer Overcome limits that Open source does not have or have yet.	Take more time and cost Skills design of automation architectures are limited and make more complex framework. It’s become heavy and difficult extended it. Difficult to apply different projects (different types as Web, Telecom, Hardware driver, …) Quickly outdated because heavily investing and wrong way make to difficulty fixing, less invest no catch up new projects with high technology.

     Example:

      Dis-advantage: You try to create a framework based on another tools and you believes to build it successful. And you make everything to development it. But this framework could not progressed and stopped.

      Advantage: You have strong team who will build a framework is so good, it is easy reuse and maintenance. (^_^)

3.  You want to use open source tool

•  Out-of-date
• Basics
• Difficult to use
• Need good programming skills

4. Conclusion:

Besides, many tool works well but they operate separately, not integrated with each other. We should be develop FW or call Wrapper to combine them together. I see that open source tools which people rarely do all the functions which you needed, you want to use to combine many different tools, different company, different data, different how to use it. In general, if the project is small, short-time (6months – 1 year), you can develop the small FW or wrapper to save time for manual. Major projects or big team do the automation FW. I think it take a lot of money to build it. And you buy a commercial tool (can buy a key of tools).

Example: you want to test web, there are functional, performance/load, web services, database… but no one open source combine all types test, you should incorporate selenium, soap UI, load test(free), … but they do the different company.

HoaLe