How to Develop a Test Automation Framework?

Summary:

Test Automation Frameworks have significant importance in the success or failure of applications. They help in reducing the maintenance costs and efforts put by the testing teams. In addition to these, a powerful test automation framework benefits in many ways such as increased Return on Investment (ROI), delivers the software at the right period, saves cost, etc. Hence, while building the test automation framework it is important for enterprises to follow the best practices.

Body:

Today’s digital era demands enterprises for delivering products faster to compete with changing market and customer requirements. To make the products delivered with quality-assured software testing has become a major requirement. But to ensure that the software testing is practiced with the right automation architecture, it becomes important to have a powerful test automation framework.

Test automation frameworks help in maintaining test cases, organize the reports, increase the speed, quality, accuracy in test cases, etc. Evidently, to leverage all these benefits, it is essential to develop a test automation framework with the best practices.

What is the Test Automation Framework?

Test Automation Framework consists of a set of guidelines to provide an execution environment to automate test scripts. The frameworks comprise of testing practices and testing tools to enhance the process of automation testing. There are a number of benefits achieved with frameworks such as:

• Assures in enhancing the testing practice
• Minimizes the maintenance costs
• Improves test coverage
• Increases ROI
• Limits manual intervention
• Ensures code reusability

What are the types of Automation Testing Frameworks?

There are six automation testing frameworks that are widely preferred by teams. While building the testing framework, it is a crucial step to choose the right framework for the application.

• Hybrid Testing Framework
• Linear Automation Framework
• Modular-based Testing Framework
• Keyword-driven Framework
• Library Architecture Testing Framework
• Data-Driven Framework

How to develop a powerful Test Automation Framework?

In order to develop a powerful test automation framework for developing an application, it is very crucial to follow the best practices such as:

1. Need to create wrapper methods for libraries: This way of extending the library features helps in enabling better logging capabilities and handling errors.
2. Need for implementing a custom logger: To run a test case, it is essential that the activity information is logged into the file. This helps to run the test cases and future audits.
3. Need to choose the right designing pattern: It is essential to choose the best design pattern to achieve benefits such as speeding up test case development, preventing minor issues to turn bigger, improving code readability, etc.
4. Need for Separating tests from the Automation framework: It is good to separate the test script logic from the automation framework because this helps in improving the code readability
5. Need to create a proper folder structure for code: The naming or the definition of folder structure should be code readable and understandable.
6. Need to separate Web services, UI, Databases: Separation of concerns is a crucial principle in frameworks. Hence, an additional layer is essential for API, databases, UI, and web services to avoid clutters.
7. Need to develop continuous development: Continuous testing has to be integrated with the help of automation tools, for example, Maven helps to ensure that the software is free from the break after every commit.

Conclusion:

Test Automation Framework is one of the most important components in the software testing life cycle (STLC). It is the factor that can give success or failure in app development. Hence, it is essential to develop an effective test automation framework for a successful SDLC. The above-mentioned are the steps helping to develop a test automation framework. Leverage software testing services from an independent QA services provider to achieve the complete benefits with test automation frameworks.

About the Author:

I am a technical content writer, interested in writing articles on the latest IT related topics. In this article, I tried to share my views on the test automation framework and the steps for developing an effective test automation framework.