Automation Test is a buzzword among software development companies nowadays and is crucial to application success in today’s competitive business environment. It is an important element of product development, especially when it comes to ensuring quality, reliability, and performance. The two main approaches to software testing are manual testing and test automation services. In this blog, we will discuss the 6 reasons why automation tests fail. Read on!
What Is Automation Test?
Test automation evaluates the quality of software using scripts and tools. It enables organizations to understand the quality of their software products and ensure it is bug-free or not. A lot of organizations are embracing test automation as it reduces testing time, decreases human intervention, minimizes error, and much more.
Six Reasons Why Automation Test Fails
Test automation is a relatively new concept and has been adopted by several companies, for example, mobile app development firms across the globe. However, it comes with a lot of challenges, some of the main reasons that lead to automation test failure are as follows:
1. Focus on UI testing alone
Focusing solely on User Interface (UI) testing is the first and most typical reason for test automation failure. Although user interface testing is an important component of test automation, it is not the only aspect to be focused on. If not written correctly, UI tests can be very slow and unreliable. It takes time to carry out UI tests. QA analysts must leverage headless browsers and parallelize testing to cut down on this time and conduct tests more quickly.
2. Failure to test from an end-user perspective
The next common error made by test automation engineers is failing to comprehend the user’s perspective. The majority of test automation is written to see if a specific feature works. Exceptional scenarios and faults are rarely checked by automated testing. While a test can determine whether users can log in, few can determine what happens if the user types in a long or incorrect username. Will the server crash? Will an error message be displayed to the user? In other words, testing for “Negative Scenarios” is a vital feature that should be included in automated tests.
3. Unable to differentiate between app error and test error
It’s hardly surprising that GUI Automation tests are unreliable and frequently fail. What’s unexpected is that determining whether a failure is due to a test fault or a genuine application error might be tough at times. Tests that don’t provide enough information to distinguish between a test and an app issue are often overlooked by both developers and QA during automation testing.
4. Siloed test automation
Siloed automation is another cause of test automation failure. The test engineers write and run the tests independently from the development team in the vast majority of circumstances. The development team has no idea how those tests are written, yet it is forced to rely on them. Thus, siloed testing methodology leads to unwanted ambiguity. App testing is not a one-step procedure. It must be done in conjunction with development. Test automation should ideally be included in the CI/CD pipeline. It cannot be successful without efficient collaboration with the development and other project teams.
5. Tight deadlines
In today’s business world, deadlines are unavoidable. Deadlines must be made flexible based on the automation tools and techniques used. Test automation isn’t a quick fix. Many managers, on the other hand, demand the team to produce faultless test cases in a short amount of time. The issue is frequently not with the automation team, but with the tools in use. Before deciding on the best test automation tool, it’s necessary to consider a variety of factors. Every organization can develop its own test automation technologies in-house if they have the necessary expertise pool. It’s frequently a question of whether to build or buy automation tools to meet the time to market demands.
6. Web elements with undefined IDs
Most of the time, developers fail to assign IDs to all web elements, despite the fact that IDs are required for effective testing. As a result, test automation fails. The reason for the failure is that the automated test script is unable to locate these site items within the specified time limit. As a result, the QA team must assign unique IDs to all site items in order to ensure that the script is properly synchronized.
Conclusion
Automated testing isn’t difficult, but it’s also not something to be taken lightly. Test automation services often fail due to outdated procedures, inadequate tools, and a lack of effective communication. Keeping an eye on the above-discussed aspects can assist test engineers in creating appropriate automated tests for new and existing applications.
