Organizations are using test automation more and more to replace the time-consuming, laborious, and resource-intensive daily testing of systems and applications. There are a few mistakes a tester may make, though, that could decrease the test automation’s ROI in addition to making it fail over time.
List of Mistakes to Avoid While Performing Playwright Automated Testing
- Wrong Tool Selection
- Insufficient Test Validation
- Ignoring the CI/CD Pipeline
- Automation Maintenance
- Attempting to Replace Manual Testing
- Record/Play Trap
- Misplaced Priorities
Detail for most common test automation mistakes and ways to avoid them
1. Wrong Tool Selection
The choice of test automation technology is one of the main causes why software test automation projects fail or are unable to produce the desired degree of efficiency. Many different things can cause poor decision-making and tool selection, but the following are the most frequent ones:
- The testing specifications for the application being tested (AUT) are not fully examined.
- The specifications for the test tool are not made explicit.
- The test team’s readiness or skill set is not properly evaluated.
- Evaluation of tool vendor and capability is either not done or done incorrectly.
- The tool was either chosen only because it was an “open source” or a cost-benefit analysis was not conducted.
By establishing a rigorous tool and vendor review process, organizations can easily avoid the aforementioned pitfalls. For a smooth adoption, teams who will utilize a tool for automation should participate in the review process as well. While it’s true that no single tool can satisfy all of your requirements, a careful review and selection process can guarantee that the majority of your pressing requirements are satisfied.
2. Insufficient Test Validation
A crucial component of testing is data validation. Test engineers frequently commit the error of not fully validating a scenario. When examined at the user interface (UI) level, for instance, functionality can seem to be operating without any issues. But in the background, at the database level, it might not be ensuring the expected data integrity, which might cause significant system problems.
Test automation scripts must be created to validate functionality at all levels, not just at the UI level, in order to prevent such problems. AUT production will always be vulnerable to bug leaks if the validation is limited to solely visible UI elements (buttons, texts, hyperlinks, combo boxes, etc.).
3. Ignoring the CI/CD Pipeline
Accelerating the software release cycle is the goal of continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD). It helps teams to swiftly test, integrate, and make end-user-accessible any modest incremental code changes. A crucial stage in the entire CI/CD pipeline is test automation.
Teams frequently fail to integrate test automation with the CI/CD pipeline, which means they are ultimately not utilizing the full potential of automated tests or the CI/CD tool. To swiftly ship high-quality releases to the market, test teams must develop automated build acceptance, smoke, and/or restricted regression test suites and link them with their CI/CD workflow.
4. Automation Maintenance
Regular maintenance is necessary for every test automation, whether it is carried out automatically by the tool or manually through updates. The test automation coverage and progress are essentially reduced as a result of the fact that many professionals in this field either do not take the effort for maintenance into account when choosing an automation tool, the automated scripts are not designed with the goal of keeping maintenance overhead low, or maintenance is completely disregarded for an extended period of time.
One must consider the maintenance costs while choosing an automation tool. It goes without saying that a tool with self-healing capabilities is superior to one without. Even with self-healing solutions, test teams still need to stay on top of any new application changes and make sure that the automation scripts are kept current.
5. Attempting to Replace Manual Testing
It’s simple to believe that automated testing can address every testing issue. The truth is that automated testing cannot possibly take the place of manual testing. The human eye is a better verifier of some things. Usability and exploratory testing, for instance, are better left in the hands of manual test teams. These teams must agree on what should be automated and what should not, as well as when to execute automated test cycles. Always think of automation as a support system for manual testers.
6. Record/Play Trap
‘Record and play’ features are provided by the majority of contemporary automation solutions, enabling users to quickly construct automated scripts for particular scenarios. Although this is fantastic, there is a pitfall because these automation scripts are created using static data, which is typically not reusable. Additionally, the tools record no validations performed with the naked eye. Additionally, test engineers will need to capture the scenario again each time it changes. Any dynamic data can be lost during re-recording and would then need to be manually imported.
The majority of test automation systems come with built-in record and play capabilities, which let users convert user actions on the application being tested into automated test scripts. However, it creates the misleading idea that one can automate test cases quickly, which is categorically untrue.
Only the base script should be created using this functionality, and it should also be used to teach beginning automation engineers. When choosing a tool or automating with a long-term perspective, one must avoid this record and play for strong, long-lasting scripts.
7. Misplaced Priorities
Last but not least, test automation users frequently establish the wrong priorities, automating tests for application functionality that is still unstable or not as vital before automating tests for those that are frequently repeated but low-value use cases. In order to demonstrate good progress, automation engineers typically automate the simplest test cases first.
Tools are readily accessible to help verify accuracy and shorten time-to-market, and there are numerous ways to automate tests. Automation of tests is essential and needs to be in line with your business processes. But don’t count on quick victories. To improve test coverage and return on investment, align your company with the appropriate test automation tool(s) and specialists.
Conclusion
In this post, we collect some Mistakes to Avoid While Performing Playwright Automated Testing. We hope this information will help you and in the last kindly share, your feedback in the comment box.
