7 Challenges In Test Automation and How To Overcome Them

Testlio

February 9th, 2024

Test automation is critical for a holistic software testing strategy in today’s DevOps cycle. Efficient automated QA systems run by talented engineers can shorten development times, improve time to release, lower costs, and drive scale. It’s worth noting that nearly a quarter of companies that initiated automated software testing showed an ROI within the first six months. Sounds perfect, right?

Unfortunately, there are still major challenges in test automation that can cause significant issues while impacting app speed and quality. Here are seven of the most common automation testing challenges and how DevOps teams can work to overcome them.

1. Quality Engineering Talent Shortage

The global talent shortage affects nearly every industry, so it tracks that one of the biggest challenges to adopting test automation is finding and retaining the talent you need. Techstrong Research data shows that over 88% of companies struggle to find, hire, and retain quality testing and automation support engineers. The global quality engineering talent scarcity impacts the quality and speed-to-market of products for companies, causing delays and often cost overruns. At the same time, DevOps teams are being asked to release code more quickly than ever before.

Many companies will need a strategic combination of digital tools, platforms, and software testing teams to bridge the talent gap. So first, to meet this challenge, explore multiple software testing staffing models. Do you have the existing infrastructure to support full-time QEs? Or do you need to leverage QEs through an outsourced testing partner? Outsourced testing is an excellent option if you need a consistent, knowledgeable QE/QA team to cover many locations/devices, prioritize continuous testing, and develop an automated strategy with dedicated partnerships to help.

From there, your QE team can focus on test automation development that optimizes and fully integrates existing manual processes and human testers with new automated resources.

2. Upfront Investment 

Moving from manual to automated testing can be an expensive process. Choosing the right automation tools involves costs such as licensing fees and specialized features. It may also require investing resources in training existing staff or hiring new professionals to learn test automation skills, tool proficiency, and programming expertise. Additionally, creating automation scripts may require a significant initial investment in writing, debugging, and maintaining scripts, particularly for complex applications with dynamic user interfaces.

However, despite the high upfront costs, automated testing can bring significant benefits to organizations. It can lead to faster test execution, improved test coverage, and long-term cost savings in testing efforts. To maximize investments in test automation services, many companies opt for open-source tools and frameworks with a strong community and support system. 

3. Finding the Right Testing Framework or Tool 

The testing framework you implement plays a critical role in the success of your automation efforts. Even a well-thought-out test automation strategy is bound to fail if you don’t have the right tools for it. There are numerous ready-to-use automation frameworks on the market, but if they aren’t tailored to your specific business needs, they can produce inconsistent and broken scripts. 

The same applies to open-source solutions. While they offer flexibility and can help drive down costs, standardizing and adapting them to handle specific testing requirements, integrate with other tools and systems, and support your workflows takes considerable time and expertise.

So, be sure to first conduct a thorough needs assessment. Then, perform research and compare your options regarding features, customizability, scalability, compatibility with your tech stack, community support, and cost. Take each for a test drive on smaller, non-critical projects. Once you’ve chosen the best fit, start small and scale gradually.

4. Script Writing, Implementation, and Maintenance

One of the most time-consuming parts of the test automation development process is developing the scripts and testing environment. Getting it right from the start is crucial since flaws in the writing, implementing, and maintaining scripts can degrade app quality and cause significant rework. It’s also expensive since you’re paying QE talent to manage the process. 

Test scripts require ongoing updates to accommodate changes in the application under test—doing so ensures they remain relevant as the app evolves. While low-code/no-code tools help generate test scripts quickly, they aren’t equipped to facilitate swift test script adjustments. 

For one, as applications become more complex, they typically need more specific and detailed test script changes. Most low-code/no-code platforms aren’t built for this level of granularity—they can only offer limited customization options. For another, low-code/no-code users typically rely on the vendor to introduce new features or integrate support for emerging frameworks and technologies. This inevitably delays script maintenance. 

5. Bottlenecks Caused by Flaky Scripts

Automation provides an efficient way to test code, but as more tests are introduced, it can create bottlenecks in the system. The sheer volume of tests and testing types can sometimes be overwhelming, backing up the queue and slowing delivery. Test runs start to get delayed. Test results are late, flaky, or rushed. Then, when broken scripts or flaws are introduced into the testing environment, the problems only magnify. Engineers must be diverted to repair the testing environment, removing them from other duties and slowing the development cycle.

To keep the CI/CD cycle flowing smoothly and prevent test automation challenges, focus on creating a sustainable process. Integrations with Testlio’s automated features or other leading third-party automation platforms pull automation test failures for manual validation or fallback. Failure signals are then pushed to manual testers who investigate, reproduce, and quickly offer actionable insights.

6. Maintaining Integrations Across a Diverse DevOps Toolchain

Too often, separate tools and platforms are operated in siloed environments, requiring additional work, such as adjusting file formats during handoffs. It also creates a need for more visibility between processes or team members; perhaps some are utilizing tools, and others are not. Yet, many DevOps teams accept that it’s the way things are and work around it — leading to repetitive, manual processes that can introduce human error when they could be automated.

Don’t settle for inefficient or non-existent communication and integration between your platforms. The right toolchain can make all the difference in testing environments. A fused testing pipeline with integrated tools can accelerate the DevOps process and avoid errors. By creating a seamless workflow, you can generate a complete, end-to-end approach for testing. For example, Testlio has developed an integrated fused testing toolchain that can help accelerate testing by using the following:

• An open-platform architecture (that’s key!) 
• Prebuilt testing integrations
• A complete fused testing ecosystem

Fused testing helps maximize attainable ROI on current & future investments in test automation tooling with an open and extensible architecture. An agnostic approach to DevOps integrations lowers switching costs and provides flexible tooling options for task management, test management, and test automation through partnerships and integrations.

7. Automated Tests Miss Human Issues

Software devs are under pressure to make tradeoffs on speed, quality, and feature sets to meet deadlines for release. Though automation is often touted as the ultimate solution to speed issues, developers must be careful about which tests they automate and which they do not. Unit tests, API tests, and UI tests are prime for automation. 

However, automated tests can only notice some of the apparent issues manual testers would see, specifically in usability, exploratory, and localization testing areas. 

• Exploratory Testing: Software bugs are sneaky — they hide in the nooks and crannies of project requirements and user stories. Structured exploratory testing helps uncover issues missed by automated scripts.
• Usability Testing: Usability revolves around the entire app-driven experience — requiring human testing on real devices and in real locations. Usability testing uncovers problem areas where the customer experience falters inside and outside the app.
• Localization Testing: Users will pass up products whose graphical or UI elements are incompatible with their culture, language, or preferred devices. Localization testing matches your app with an expert network of global testers to ensure your app passes the “locals” test.

Manual testing is essential for verifying new features and offering actionable reproduction instructions for issues missed by flaky or broken automated scripts. While automated testing offers immediate test execution, manual testing provides flexibility and coverage that only humans with real devices and localized insights can perform. The real solution to missed issues during automation is to fuse manual and automated testing, merging machine and human resources to test in parallel. 

Read how NFT marketplace LGND fuses manual and automated testing for a 98% reduction in testing time and a true CI/CD pipeline.

Shift Left – The Key to Successful Test Automation

Solving this test automation challenge requires rethinking the workflow. For many, testing comes near the end of the development cycle. Today, however, there’s an increasing movement to shift left and integrate testing earlier in the CI/CD pipeline.

Shift-left testing reduces costs by testing and solving problems earlier in the development cycle. Defects get repaired as they are found rather than waiting for the final testing cycle. Once this process works, it provides a continuous testing environment that reduces bugs and errors in the early stages, saving precious dev time.