1. Bringing more value out of automation testing

2. Error removal & Re-working on projects
- Large portion of s/w development cost consist of error removal and re-working on projects.

3. Early detection

4. Adoption of Devops & Automation testing

5. How to bring more value out of automation testing
Setting the right expectation about the benefits of automation testing
Where to automate
Ownership
Priority
Execution point
Parallel execution
Decide what test cases to automate
Reporting
Building the right automation framework / tool
Test data
Reciewing tests after a certail period of time

6. How to bring more value out of automation testing
Parallel execution
Decide what test cases to automate
Reporting
Building the right automation framework / tool
Test data
Reviewing tests after a certain period of time

7. Setting the right expectation about the benefits of automation testing

8. Expectation can be
Stakeholders – visualize – automation as a silver bullet for fixing all pain points.
Stakeholders – envision – automaton tests to be quicker, cheaper and effective in identifying all defects.
Automation test are expected to be run on click with 100% pass rate
In short, expectation is to have complete code coverage.

9. reality Automation scripts are only good as how you script it
Automation validation/checks will alert tester about problems that checks have been programmed to detect, it ignore all other problems outside of it.
Cost, speed, ROI – will depend on the tool used and complexity of tests implemented.
Automation testing is never a replacement for exploratory/manual testing.
Implementing test automation does not always result in achieving this goal.

10. Where to automate

11. Where to automate
Automate more at the lower levels of testing pyramid. Preferably while the product / software is developed.
It is relatively cheaper to write more tests at the base of pyramid as compared to the top.
Tests are quicker and more stable at the bottom level.

12. Where to automate
This is not achievable without a significant investment in people, time and tools.
This will affect the ROI; there is no right or wrong way to do automation.
Having something is better than nothing is.

13. Where to automate
When companies automate more at the UI level- it will take ages to create and maintain tests. This will not bring more value to the product.
When a company hires an automation engineer, of course, the first task is to automate the regression suites and it starts with the UI level. So ROI might not be able to meet the expectation.

14. ownership
Who is responsible for implementing, maintaining and reporting the automation finds?
Reporting can be owned by a QA team, or Shared between QA & Developers –
More transparent – Team know what the automation tests are and how they work.

15. priority Is automation a top priority / does it run on the side?
Do not expect more value without prioritizing this effort.
What does that mean – any new feature developer should have automation around it
Create a backlog which prioritize automation test to be done

16. Execution Point After build? Before code merge?
I believe automation smoke tests should run before developers code is merged into branch/master.
Benefits
Potentially no code errors / bugs are allowed to enter branch.
Increased communication between team members.
Found bugs early – Test cannot improve quality when they are executed downstream. It is too late.

17. Parallel Execution of tests
To reduce the testing time.
Quicker feedback cycle

18. Parallel Execution of tests
Why parallel execution – consider 100 tests take 20 hours to test. By running the 25 parallel tests at the same time, test execution can be reduced to just 48 minutes.

19. Parallel Execution of tests
How to start with parallel execution – Start with Test Automation Framework that has parallel testing supported. For example in Java, JVM Parallel Plugin can be used to run the tests in parallel and can be used to run parallel.
Using Zelenium – to run the tests in parallel. Zelenium is a  flexible and scalable container based Selenium Grid with video recording, live preview, basic auth & dashboard. 
Using third party services like Browser stack / Sauce labs will do the same job.
I reckon a combination of in house selenium grid and third party application like Sauce / browser stack.

20. Decide what Test Cases to Automate / Test Plan
It’s nearly impossible to automate all testing, so it’s important to decide what test cases should be automated first.
ROI – is linked to how many times a given test can be repeated.
Test that are only performed few time are better left for manual testing.

21. Decide what Test Cases to Automate / Test Plan
Good candidates are that are run frequently, required large amounts of data to perform same action.
Repetitive tests that run for multiple builds.
Tests that tend to cause human error.

22. Decide what Test Cases to Automate / Test Plan
Test cases that require multiple users
Frequently used functionality that introduces high-risk conditions.
Tests that are impossible to perform manually.
Test cases that deal with complex business logic

23. Decide what Test Cases to Automate / Test Plan
Tests that run on several different hardware or software platforms and configurations.
Tests that take a lot of effort and time when manual testing.
Cross platform test cases

24. Reporting
What kind of reports are needed ? Do we need a central reporting system or each test or a decentralised reporting? Or a mixture of both?

25. Building the right automation framework / tool
There are plenty of automation tools available in the market
Some are simply record and play or normal scripting using Selenium for web application or tools that are powered by AI.
This depends on many things like the platform and technology that are testing – are you testing a Node/Java / even server less application.
Do the framework need to support web/mobile/API levels?
Skillset of the person who is implementing the framework.

26. Test data How important is the test data for the application?
Who will prepare the test data?
Where will it read from – database / json / excel sources.

27. Reviewing tests
Reviewing the test will help to eliminate the old and outdated test which will help to reducing the cost and effort in maintaining them.

28. Thank you