Automated Testing Strategy: How to Develop Yours [ +Template]
This article serves as a step-by-step guide for creating a test automation strategy. It will help you answer why, when, and how to perform automated testing, so you can not only implement it but also overcome its challenges.
According to Gartner’s 2023 report, 60% of the organizations surveyed automate their software testing to boost product quality, 41% reported using it to speed up deployment, and 29% say it helps alleviate their QA teams’ workload. Also, 43% of these organizations claimed that test automation results in higher test accuracy.
Despite automation’s large-scale adoption and various benefits, many QA leaders and test engineers find its implementation challenging. One reason is the need for an effective automated testing strategy.
Table of Contents
- What is a Test Automation Strategy?
- Why Do We Need an Automated Testing Strategy?
- Choosing the Right Test Cases to Automate
- Step-by-Step Guide To Creating an Automated Testing Strategy
- Integrating Automated Scripts With Manual Testing
- Final Thoughts
What is a Test Automation Strategy?
An automated testing strategy is a plan for testing software using scripts and ingenious automated QA tools. Like a manual testing plan, an appropriate strategy helps you identify the scope of automation testing, its goals, levels, types, tools, test environment, and performance metrics.
It also lets you differentiate the test cases that need automation testing from those that require manual testing. Thus, you can ensure that effort and resources are well-optimized, i.e., the test cases are not duplicated under both testing types, and no test case is left unexecuted.
Why Do We Need an Automated Testing Strategy?
The brief answer to this question is to increase your automation testing efforts’ return on investment (ROI). It may seem like a simple plan to help QA teams streamline their testing tasks, but it serves a much greater purpose. The implementation of a comprehensive strategy can provide various benefits that will enhance your ROI.
Gain Clarity on Vision
Carving out a proper testing plan enables you to establish a clear vision for your project. Although agile project development allows change requests, often requiring adjustments such as integrating new applications into your framework or even switching the framework technology, the key is sticking to your original vision. If the vision is unclear, unforeseen delays become inevitable, and your project development may suffer permanently when critical issues arise.
Therefore, having a proper automation strategy is important, especially for large projects with repetitive tasks. A well-defined vision provides a documented approach to evaluating significant changes and making informed decisions, ensuring your project stays on track.
Preparing for Testing Squeeze
A well-designed plan can help you efficiently tackle the dreadful “testing squeeze” situations by identifying scripts that need to be executed for priority test cases, ensuring critical features are tested first, and no mission-critical functionality is left untested.
“Testing squeeze” refers to a scenario in software development where the time allocated for testing is compressed. It can occur due to delays in earlier stages of the project, such as development or requirement elicitation.
Avoid Technology Efficiency Loss
Having a thoughtful, documented testing approach can help you avoid choosing the wrong automation technology, which would otherwise cause technology efficiency loss. The plan must be accurate and tailored to fit the needs of the application you are developing. Without it, you may end up using technology that isn’t going to help you get the most out of your automation efforts.
In short, a strategy customized for your testing needs should identify risks in advance and analyze possible solutions to mitigate them. This document also acts as an auditing tool to help you measure your progress against goals and keeps you from getting off track.
Choosing the Right Test Cases to Automate
Writing test scripts can be time-consuming, and it’s impossible to automate everything. So the key to getting maximum ROI from test automation is to develop a strategy that increases velocity in the short and long term. You can consider the following criteria to identify the test cases that should be automated.
- Repetitiveness/Frequency of Execution: Test cases that are executed in every release. Automating these will save time and ensure consistency in repeated executions.
For example, the application launch, navigation to click the action button, etc.
- High Risk and Critical Functionality: Test cases that cover critical application functionality and where failure can have severe consequences should be automated to ensure thorough and reliable testing.
- Complexity and Error-Prone: Test cases that are complex and prone to human error when executed manually. Testing such functionalities with advanced tools will ensure precision and consistency. For example, calculating total order cost by applying region-specific tax percentages.
- Data-Driven Testing: It refers to the test cases that involve massive data sets and numerous data combinations. Their automation will ensure accuracy in processing large datasets and variations.
For example, your application has different roles with different permission sets. Instead of manually performing smoke testing by logging into each role’s interface to test its permissions, you can automate these tests and save a lot of effort while gaining accurate results.
- Compatibility Testing: Tests that must be run across various browsers, devices, or operating systems. Automating them will ensure consistent testing across multiple environments. For example, launching an online photo editor application.
- Time-Consuming Tests: Test cases that take a long time to execute manually, especially when there are too many interdependencies among an application’s modules, i.e., a change in one module affects the functionality of another module. In such cases, running manual test cases can be mundane and tedious. Automating these test cases can improve efficiency and free up manual testers for more exploratory and creative testing tasks.
For example, verifying a specific field text in the profile record of all registered users.
- Regression Testing: Regression test cases verify that the recent code updates haven’t adversely affected existing functionality. They should be automated to ensure they are executed thoroughly and consistently with every code change.
- Performance and Load Testing: If your application requires performance and load testing, using automated tools is a must. Simulating numerous users and complex interactions would be impractical.
For example, testing an application’s response and performance for the scenario when students’ exam results are announced because everyone will be logging in simultaneously to check for their grades.
By meticulously selecting test cases suited for automation based on these criteria, you can maximize your testing efforts’ return on investment (ROI), ensuring significant efficiency, accuracy, and coverage benefits.
Overall, which test cases should be automated will depend on the software and the team’s capabilities. Still, the one constant is identifying those that will heighten quality while freeing time. Writing test cases for base functionality allows for a more thorough manual exploration of new features.
Step-by-Step Guide To Creating an Automated Testing Strategy
A complete strategy for automated testing should include what should be done before, during, and after the sprint release.
Before the Sprint
The steps that should be performed before executing the tests should be documented in this section.
1. Define the Scope and Objectives
In addition to saving time and speeding up the development process, you must clearly outline the goals you want to achieve and the scope of automation testing, i.e., which test cases will be automated. The following pointers can help identify your scope and objectives.
- What are your reasons for opting for automation, such as reducing manual testing efforts, improving test coverage, and increasing testing efficiency?
- What is your expected ROI from it?
- Which parts of the application will be automated? When selecting the test cases, consider the criteria we shared in the section above.
- What should be the end goal of it?
2. Identify Your Risks and Define Your Priority
Identify the risks of automation testing by understanding the business impact of various application features. The higher the business impact, the higher the loss if something goes wrong. To avoid such mishaps, features that add to your business’ value should be prioritized accordingly.
Your automated testing strategy should prioritize tests based on critical business values. For example, if the API integrating Stripe with your e-commerce application is left untested, the ramifications could be substantial financial losses from abandoned carts.
3. Select the Right Automation Tools
You need to determine and ensure that you allocate the right resources and infrastructure for integrating automation into your testing processes. For example, which QA tools will you use for load testing, and do you have the correct libraries and APIs to enable your testing tools to run test cases on your application?
If time allows, you can conduct a trial or proof of concept (POC) with shortlisted tools to evaluate their suitability for your project needs.
4. Environment Setup
Your strategy must include testing environment needs, such as the stages of your application that will be tested with automated scripts to validate requirements, i.e., dev, staging, production, or all these instances.
Also, your automated QA strategy should outline if there are any specific environmental conditions, such as any VPNs or tokens required, and where to acquire them.
5. Select the Right Test Automation Framework
In your strategy, you must choose an automation framework type that aligns with your project requirements. Given below is a summary of various test automation frameworks.
| Framework | Description | Pros | Cons | Popular Tools |
| Linear (Record and Playback) | It runs tests by recording actions and playing them back | It’s simple, easy to use, and can be set up quickly without any programming skills. | – Not scalable, and requires high maintenance – High duplication of test scripts | Selenium IDE |
| Modular Testing | Test scripts are divided into smaller modules or functions | Test scripts are easy to maintain and allow for easier debugging | Initial setup is time-consuming and requires programming skills. | Selenium WebDriver with TestNG or JUnit |
| Data-Driven Testing | Test data is stored separately from test logic. Files such as CSV and JSON can be used for data storage | – Requires less effort as it enhances reusability – New test cases can be added easily | – Test data is challenging to manage – It requires knowledge of handling external data sources | Selenium with Apache POI, TestNG (DataProviders) |
| Keyword-Driven Testing | Table format is used to define keywords or actions for functions being tested | – Easy for new or amateur testers – Easy to read and understand | – It’s time-consuming – Setup cost is high | UFT/QTP, Selenium with custom keyword libraries |
| Hybrid Testing | It combines the best features of other frameworks | – Highly flexible – Easy maintenance – Increases code reusability | – High initial setup time – Requires in-depth knowledge and significant expertise | Custom-built using Selenium, TestNG, and other tools |
| Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) | It uses natural language constructs for test cases | – Easy to write and read tests – Scenarios are clearly defined – Aligns with business requirements | – Requires clarity on requirements to keep scenarios simple – Difficult to maintain | Cucumber (Java), SpecFlow (.NET), Behave (Python) |
| Test-Driven Development (TDD) | Tests are written before the actual code | – Guides code development – Ensures code quality – Reduces early-stage bugs | – It can be time-consuming – Requires strong testing knowledge | JUnit, NUnit, TestNG |
While all these open-source libraries offer various advantages, you will still need to ensure you standardize your framework for your project. Relying solely on open-source libraries to build automated tests can lead to inconsistencies and an unreliable final product. Standardizing your selected framework and its libraries will make your scripts reliable and highly reusable.
6. Test Data Management
Determine how test data will be created, managed, and maintained. Consider using data generation tools (DataFactory, MockNeat, etc.) or extracting information from production data.
7. Define Team Working Strategy
Define the roles and responsibilities for executing the plan, such as who will be responsible for creating test scripts for a specific module, who will document the test results, and whether this team will be separate from your manual testers.
8. Learning Goals
If your plan includes switching manual testers to automation or transitioning to a different tech stack, you should evaluate the learning curve and set goals accordingly. When learning is involved, 100% productivity cannot be expected, as team members need time to train themselves.
During the sprint
Your planning should include your approach to the actual testing phase. This will help you identify testing tasks that must be performed during the sprint and understand how to perform them.
1. Create and Maintain Tests
Here, you will define the criteria for script writing, i.e., which standards and framework will you follow? You’ll also want to ensure you start slow when you first introduce automation. For example, writing small test cases and test cases independent of UI can make automation testing more manageable.
You’ll want to define both entrance and exit criteria and how you will ensure coverage and reliability. Your strategy should also include plans for tracking script execution and identifying failures, such as using test tagging.
Additionally, include details on how often these test cases will be maintained to stay aligned with ongoing development activities.
2. Execution Plans and DevOps Integration
Once the scripts are ready, you can specify the type of testing to be performed, such as sanity, smoke, or regression. You should also determine how often these test cycles will occur. For example, regression testing should be conducted bi-weekly.
In addition, you may want to consider DevOps integration, which reduces your testing team’s dependency on internal experts by allowing anyone to execute and generate reports.
After the sprint
The tasks that need to be performed after running automated tests should also be outlined.
1. Reporting
Invest in detailed reporting to gain insights into test results, coverage, and performance. To ensure meaningful reporting, it is important to define the key metrics for tracking automation effectiveness, such as pass/fail rates, test coverage, and execution time.
2. Review, Analyze, and Update
It is important to include guidelines for consistent review of test scripts in your test automation planning. For instance, it’s important to understand the reasons behind false failures and decide whether the test scripts need to be updated. Any changes made should align with the original goals. It’s also beneficial to incorporate version control in your plan to manage test scripts and keep a record of changes.
By following these steps, you can develop a strong and efficient strategy that aligns with your project goals and improves the overall quality of your software product.
Integrating Automated Scripts With Manual Testing
Although automation is the future of QA, manual testing is still necessary to execute test cases that require human creativity and intuition.
So, for an effective automated testing strategy, the key is to identify test cases that will remain relevant over time and write scripts in a way that protects them from inevitable changes as much as possible.
| Where Automation Excels | Where Humans Excel |
| Unit tests and integration tests when the functionality under test is very stable. | UI and UX testing to test the look and feel of an app. |
| Supporting DevOps with repeatable tests running in parallel to improve results velocity and to provide development teams fast feedback. | Thinking of quality as a solution rather than acting like a robot. For example, taking the time to identify negative reviews in the app store and understanding the user needs and voice enough to build thoughtful test plans. |
| Repetitive and data-intensive tests. | Judgment: If an automated test fails, a human usually judges whether the test or the product code is at fault. |
| Happy path testing using known inputs and a clearly defined expected output. | Humans test combinations that aren’t anticipated in the automated test cases. They also conduct exploratory testing for higher-level assessment of complex business flow and real-life situations such as interruptions and display image orientation. |
Final Thoughts
Building test automation capabilities from scratch and hiring the right talent to support your strategy can be very challenging. The automation landscape is constantly evolving with advancements like AI and machine learning. Expecting your team to stay ahead of the latest trends while delivering exceptional products is a recipe for failure.
A knowledgeable partner like Testlio can help you build a comprehensive automated testing strategy, update your test suites, and keep up with the latest technologies so your team can focus on more critical issues. Our flexible test automation solution, powered by a best-in-class services team and a robust platform, can help you get the most value out of automation, offer guidance on best practices, help you standardize your frameworks, and more.