Devops for Growth

Here are some of the patterns that an organization can follow when applying test automation:
Pyramid Testing

When following the testing pyramid, there will be three automated test levels coming in before you get to the manual tests.
Automated Unit Tests

This level would be the starting point at the bottom of the pyramid. It involves a lot of test situations. These would be done separately, which shortens the execution time per block of the application code.

You get to see how the software behaves under different circumstances, try valid and invalid inputs, and also discover any unexpected behavior. Here, you can get a lot of feedback quickly.
Automated Integration Tests

In this next level, you try scenarios that involve different code components. The focus is on how these components work together and whether every call and response is spot on.

You also won’t have to run many test scenarios. At this level, things may move a bit slower since you’re mainly examining the intercommunication aspect. These test scenarios would cover APIs, methods, classes, etc.
Automated UI Tests

This would be the third level, and would also be of an end-to-end nature. You test an application with the integrations running and emulate real-life user interactions. This level would have tests running much slower since you’re testing more elaborate scenarios from start to end.

You’ll have fewer tests, covering major features, happy paths, and more. You get to discover how several components work together when needed in a typical use case.
The Ice Cream Cone (Anti-Pattern)

ice cream cone pattern test

In this pattern, the testing pyramid is inverted, so to speak. This means that a lot more of the QA team’s efforts are sucked away from automating unit tests. The same will happen for the other testing levels, though it might be to a lesser extent.

Nevertheless, the result is most of the testing is being done manually. Automated tests will largely be at UI/end-to-end tests level, and to some extent, the integration tests too. The result is a team that is stretched thin with these upper test levels. You’ll have fewer automated unit tests and move much slower in this aspect.

You may also have bugs and other random issues constantly trickling down from the manual tests, but not always being caught on time. In an agile environment, demanding frequent releases, you can’t thoroughly respond and make the necessary changes when unit tests are limited. You won’t be able to strike a decent balance between delivery speed and remainder flaws on your next release.
The Cupcake (Anti-Pattern)

Here, there’s a team for development, manual testing, and automated testing. They all work separately and each team tries to cover as many scenarios at each test level as possible. The problem is, with minimal communication, a lot of time can be wasted as teams have massive overlap in the scenarios tested.

And while there might be more automated UI and integration tests, unit tests still lag behind and there are more hands on deck for manual testing.

The overabundance of benefits of codeless testing tools outweigh the negative aspects of automation testing. They eventually save significant expenses and time in coding functionalities and convey quality through favorable test coverage. However, these tools need more documentation, features, and modularity. In summary, software testers prefer codeless test automation as a critical component when it comes to the Agile development procedure. This wouldn’t completely replace manual automation testing, but would accelerate their work. It is still maturing with its unique advantages and requirements in 2021 and complements the picture’s whole automation tests.

A test-automation framework is a set of best practices, common tools, and libraries that help quality-assurance testers assess the functionality, security, usability, and accessibility of multiple web and mobile applications. In a "quick-click" digital world, we're accustomed to fulfilling our needs in a jiffy. This is one reason why the software market is flooded with hundreds of test-automation frameworks.

Don't waste time creating your own test automation framework. One of these existing tools and frameworks is likely up to the job.

Let's recap!

The test pyramid provides a pattern to help you write tests which give you confidence in your code as you make changes.

Test automation reduces the need for manual checks and when done right, can give you the confidence to fully automate the release of your software.

Unit tests check classes quickly and thoroughly to make sure they keep their promises.

Integration tests check that the classes and parts of your application which need to work together, do so by collaborating as expected.

End-to-end tests check that users would be able to solve their problems by using your app when it’s switched on. For a web application, you’d automate this with code which pretends to be the user clicking about within the user interface.

Within DevOps culture, quality has become the shared responsibility of all team members who often gravitate towards applying test automation to briskly ship code changes, receive feedback, and tweak solutions to perfection.

However, implementing it in DevOps may be a tricky task. To embrace automation with confidence, companies may focus on the following best practices:

Do engage right-skilled specialists.
Do select a fit-for-purpose toolkit.
Do continuously maintain test automation suites.
Do focus on metrics to monitor progress.
Do care of test documentation and reporting.

At the same time, QA teams can succeed faster by avoiding common mistakes and:

Not overdoing DevOps automation.
Not eliminating manual testing completely.
Not following false economy.
Not starting with automating voluminous tasks.

By following these rules, organizations can guarantee a pervasive quality assurance process, accelerate product delivery, and reduce operational costs.

Assurer la qualité des microservices grâce à des tests de bout en bout peut entrer en conflit avec l'intégration et la publication rapides de composants logiciels grâce à un pipeline CI/CD automatisé. Si un test de bout en bout échoue, les pipelines CI/CD de tous les microservices impliqués sont bloqués jusqu'à ce que le problème provoquant l'échec du test soit résolu.

AI-powered Visual Web Automation

UI.Vision RPA's image and text recognition allow you to write automated visual tests with UI.Vision RPA - this makes UI.Vision RPA the first and only Chrome and Firefox extension (and Selenium IDE) that has "�� eyes". For more information please see visual UI Testing and the XClick command.

AI-powered Visual Desktop Automation

UI.Vision RPA can not only see and automate everything inside the web browser. The same image and text recognition technology can automate your desktop as well (Robotic Process Automation, RPA). For more information please see Desktop Automation and the XClick command.

Tutoriel sur les tests fonctionnels de services web avec SOAP-UI