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Quality Assurance is not an easy task to pursue. Especially when the whole idea of creating a technology that needs to cater masses is already very inclusive in its own way.
Nevertheless, when you are required to inject the concept of Quality into the SDLC, it becomes even more challenging to align with the Development process and QA activities while sticking to the chosen methodology.
Though the use of advanced testing tools and automation techniques is everything that you need to take your hands on QA solutions, the real struggle begins when a manual tester is supposed to work on the test automation process.
Since it is a skill that cannot be transpired in a single day, manual testers often encounter a few challenges that cause waste of time, mistakes, and trouble making the transition from manual to automation testing. In this blog, we will try to develop a thorough understanding of the common challenges that manual testers usually encounter when they need to adopt automation testing into their process.
Let’s begin!
1. Lack of Skill Set
Whether it is a beginner or a QA engineer engaged in manual testing, starting with automation needs the person to have the technical knowledge of the process along with some coding and programming. Therefore, most manual testers who begin with automation often have to struggle to develop an understanding of programming language and to work on the code.
Though automation testing can be learned without any prior programming knowledge, the automation testing pursued with programming and coding skills could restrict the usage of automation testing tools to features like record and playback only.
2. Limitations on User Interface
The next big challenge that is often encountered by manual testers is the task of automating the user interface testing. Since frequent changes in user interface invite massive use of cost and time resources, it makes the entire manual and automation testing efforts go in vain. The situation is not so common with the development projects but varies from project to project. Long story short, automating a project in such circumstances of frequently changing project requirements can turn to be a difficult task for manual testers.
3. Attaining Expected Deadlines
Most of the organizations that are involved in the development process are leaning towards automation testing by creating progressive automation suites. However, it is not always feasible for developers to implement automation due to several factors like project complexity, time deviation, or legacy practices that restrict automation.
4. The Hassle of Finding Test Cases That Must Be Automated
One of the most prominent challenges that lead to failure for testers adopting automation testing is the lack of detail on what must be automated and what should be skipped. As most testers try to automate everything they have as a build, it always ends up as trouble.
In simple words, it is not possible to automate 100 percent as test combinations demand the right use of functional and UI testing. Besides, some scenarios are not easy to automate and therefore need attention on what must be automated and what must be worked manually.
5. Lack of Proper Test Suites for Manual Testing
Improper or missing documentation is another prominent reason why manual testers find it difficult to work on their automation goals. It not only makes it difficult for manual testers to work on test cases but limits the ability to find defects.
On top of that, the manual test suites that do not cover all the functional scenarios and validations could drive loopholes to the automation environment. Such a situation demands testers working on automation to check back on the defined requirements and ensure all the defined scenarios are achieved through testing.
6. Updating or Maintaining Existing Automated Tests
When it comes to automation testing, the maintenance tasks often turn out to be very tricky as it needs you to work on updating all the requirements. And when you are already working on the task of switching from manual to automation testing, maintenance demands more extensive actions.
Also, if there are no automated tests suites growing in the background, the process stays smooth. On the other hand, if the automated test suite is growing, the test scenarios are usually broken by new requirements. It usually requires running the whole test script from the beginning and checking that the automation tests are working as per defined requirements while giving access to possible bugs and issues.
Finding Ways to Overcome Challenges
Since the future of testing is all about automation, it is extremely important that manual testers should develop their grip on automation techniques. Therefore, it is vital that a few good tactics and best practices must be adopted to improve the outcomes. Some of these include:
• Getting involved in training and practice sessions by showing commitment to learning code and partnering with the community.
• Though UI automation can be tricky for frequently changing requirements, practicing basic and minor automation on UI could help sharpen the skill.
• Since training and practice are vital for learning automation, manual testers could work directly with automation experts to learn the process and implement the same to shorten the test cycles.
• Automation should only be applied to the tests that should run for every build or new release related to an application.
• Whether it is automation or manual testing, testers should aim to have proper test suites.
• Last but not least, testers should aim to establish a process that is durable and can be updated easily to avoid slippage through cracks in the plan.
All in all, switching from a manual test process to automation is highly demanding, and building proficiency on a test automation process needs access to more relevant perspectives. More importantly, having the right set of skills along with a reliable technology stack can be the best thing you need to counter challenges. Besides, the ability of the tester to work on automatable test cases, functional scenarios and maintaining sanctity in the test process is everything that makes way for success.
