Test Automation
Understand the importance of automated testing.
Test everything, automate everything
If you want to build high-quality software, prepare to test and automate everything. I know that this advice might sound like an unwise investment, but I will shortly explain the reasons behind it. Afterward, I will give you hints for doing it all in practice.
Why
Low-quality standards have a rippling effect on the entire software development process, starting from engineering teams and ending with customers.
If a developer makes a code change, the chances are that something worked before, but now it is broken. An engineer needs to know about this problem as soon as possible to take immediate action for course correction. Lack of such feedback necessitates longer wait times and undesirable context switching, which impact efficiency and deliveries. Furthermore, if there is no way to detect issues, broken features can even end up in the customer’s hands.
A similar challenge occurs when you elevate your program from one environment to the next, e.g., from test to staging. You need the ability to quickly assert that everything works as it did previously since data or configuration differences affect the system’s functionality. If technical team members miss such glitches, your customers will undoubtedly find them during the next elevation from stage to production.
I know that many teams try to fight the above problems with manual testing, but it is not optimal for the long run. As a software product grows, the repetition of manual regression tests becomes cumbersome, time-consuming, mechanical, and error-prone. Such an inefficiency asks for automation, which delivers the benefit of repeatability and fast feedback loop for both developers and testers.
How much automation is enough? It depends on whether you can say what frustrates your customers and what is acceptable when it cracks. If you do not anticipate adverse outcomes from broken capabilities, maybe you do not need to worry about automation. However, in other cases, which represent the majority, it is critical that everything functions always; hence, you will need to automate ...