Improving the Quality of Digital Experiences Through Increased Coverage and Accelerated Cycles 

Digital transformation is drastically changing the software development lifecycle (SDLC), requiring faster and more frequent releases across a greater variety of platforms to keep up with rising customer expectations. As the SDLC shortens, the accompanying testing has to speed up as well. With reputation and revenue at stake in an increasingly competitive world, organizations need more agile and scalable testing processes to ensure digital products are released on time and are error free.

As a leading provider of test automation services, we’ve seen this growing need for more comprehensive, quicker testing increase the demand for automation. Compared to traditional manual testing, automated testing allows for a greater number of paths to be tested, improving coverage significantly. It offers a way to accelerate time to market while reducing errors and risk, ultimately creating a better digital experience for users. When implemented properly, test automation technology can help a Quality Assurance (QA) team:

  • Speed

    Run tests 24x7

  • Decline

    Decrease test scripting efforts

  • 3 People

    Reduce the burden of routine testing tasks

  • Continuous Data Cycle

    Execute in parallel to run thousands of continuous tests at the same time

  • Gear idea

    Eliminate human error and knowledge limitations

  • Testing Assess

    Ensure tests are done in a consistent manner every time

  • Social Media

    Increase confidence in the quality of new releases

However, introducing automation is not just about implementing the technology. It requires staff with expertise in both the tool(s) and embedding it within an organization’s test strategy. Everything cannot be automated—knowing when and where automation can bring the most value is important to maximizing results and ROI.

So, what testing scenarios can benefit the most from automation?

  • Regression testing is necessary with each release to ensure that nothing was broken when adding a new layer, maintaining code quality. These frequent, repetitive tests can be dull and overwhelming for testers to perform manually with their limited bandwidth, making them ideal candidates for automation. In turn, this allows testers to focus on the scripts that cannot be automated.

  • Agile/DeSecvOps has given rise to continuous testing, which involves running automated tests at every stage of the SDLC instead of at the end. With an accelerated time to market, it’s critical for developers to get feedback as quickly as possible. By finding and correcting bugs earlier and often in the process with these automated tests, organizations can mitigate the risk involved in each release.

  • The scale of what an organization needs to test for one product has dramatically increased as products are released across multiple platforms on different operating systems, browsers, screen sizes, resolutions, etc. This means that every test must be run across all of the configurations to ensure quality regardless of how a user accesses it. An organization that relies on manual testing simply won’t be able to keep up as digital footprints continue to expand. Automation can help lighten the burden by conducting these repetitive tests consistently across all scenarios.

  • End-to-end testing—testing the entire workflow from start to finish—is critical at a time when creating a seamless user experience is more important than ever. But workflows can be complex, especially when considering the other systems an app integrates with, and there are virtually limitless paths that a user could take. Automation can help create and run thousands of tests, significantly increasing the coverage while saving time.

  • Automation can help create synthetic data sets used for testing. Industries like banking need transactional data to perform testing, however, they cannot copy production data due to privacy regulations. Automation can create the data sets required for testing, saving time and effort.
Intelligent Test Automation

Test automation technology that leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI) and/or Machine Learning (ML) offers ways to further increase testing coverage in an accelerated, cost-effective way. These next-gen testing technologies, such as Eggplant Digital Automation Intelligence (DAI) by Keysight, take a model-based approach to testing. It starts with building a complete digital floorplan of the application that includes all possible touchpoints, then linking those together to create the potential user paths and functions that need to be tested. AI can then analyze the model, find paths testers may have missed, and create test cases to address these gaps. Instead of testing in a traditional linear fashion, AI-driven test automation takes a more comprehensive view that focuses on the entire user experience.

By leveraging intelligent test automation, organizations can:

  • Adventure Journey

    Increase coverage by testing user journeys not previously considered

  • Performance Speed

    Accelerate test case creation and execution

  • Risk

    Reduce risk by optimizing testing coverage to find more defects

  • Analytics

    Analyze applications to identify patterns of defects and prevent them in the future

  • Assessment/Envisioning

    Free up testers to perform exploratory testing, and even automate exploratory testing

  • Idea

    Predict the impact of new versions before they are released

  • Vision Journey End To End Roadmap (1)

    Track actual user journeys to ensure real customer paths are optimized

Organizations are most successful with automation when it is integrated with other strategies as part of a comprehensive testing program. Manual testing still has a place in the digital age, but its role has changed. Using automation frees up time for testers to manually perform tasks that cannot be automated and focus on complex or frequently changing applications. Organizations can also compliment automation with crowdsourced testing, especially those with many websites and applications. It’s a cost-effective way to rapidly scale up testing support by accessing a pool of freelance QA professionals to test in real-world conditions across a broad range of devices, OSs, and languages. The unbiased view of these professional testers can give unmatched insight into a product’s user experience and usability in real-life settings.

Accelerate Your Digital Transformation with Test Automation

Partnering with a test automation consulting services company like CTG can help bridge the gap between technology and people. We leverage partnerships with top test automation technology providers like Keysight Technologies (Eggplant DAI), Neotys, Tosca, Micro Focus, Ranorex, Selenium, and cypress.io—allowing us to find the right technology to meet your unique business needs.

Our experts can bring a strong test automation framework to help you get started, work alongside your internal staff to apply automation where it can have the most value, and provide training on the technology and best practices until you have the confidence to proceed on your journey alone. We also offer best-in-class testing training via CTG Academy, where companies can learn from our experts with hands-on experience with test automation projects.

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