Select The Correct Test Cases For Automation Testing: The Complete Guide

Presently is the time of Test Automation as most of the testing projects are striving to translate their manual test cases to automated ones to enhance productivity and coverage. One of the crucial steps to begin Automation Testing is, choosing the right test cases and defining the Return On Investment (ROI). In this blog, we will try to cite a few essential points to help you select the perfect candidate for automation and conclude various other factors that will produce better test results and advantages.

Let’s look at how to select correct test cases for Automation Testing?

Let’s look at why Automated Testing is good?

Automation does not overshadow or replaces Manual Testing but it complements it. Like Manual, Automation requires a technique with proper planning, monitoring, and control. Automation, when executed correctly, can become an asset to the team, project, and eventually to the institution. There are various advantages of Automation testing; here are a few important to mention:

1. Helpful to implement routine tasks like Smoke tests and Regression tests.
2. Useful in formulating the Test data.
3. Enables to execute the Test cases which include complex business logic.
4. Good to enforce the cross-platform test cases like different OS, browsers, etc.
5. Wonderful to execute the test cases which are a bit tough to execute manually.
6. When the number of iterations of the test case performances is not known.

At various times stakeholders feel that test automation works as a support tool for Manual Testing, so it’s crucial to recognize that automation is an adequate way to boost the efficiency, effectiveness, and coverage of testing. It not only saves time but also improves accuracy as repetitive assignments via the manual strategy can be prone to human mistakes and can be time-consuming.

Candidates for Automation should avoid these basic mistakes that are given below:

One of the most basic errors which testers make is ‘NOT’ Selecting the correct test cases for automation. Do not just choose any test suite. Assess the test cases completely and select the candidates for automation contemplating the most significant factor i.e. ROI. Early, we should understand and learn the ways of getting a greater and positive ROI. There is no basic method for determining accurate test cases for automation. It all relies on the application you are checking.

4 steps to select right Automation testing

Now let’s have a look at how To Select Correct Test Cases For Automation Testing:

Step 1: Recognize the parameters on which you will establish your test case as a candidate for automation. You can have your parameters depending on your application. Test cases are executed with different sets of data, browsers, environments, complex business logic, different sets of users, and large amounts of data. It requires special data.

Step 2: You should break each application into modules. You should analyze and try to recognize the test cases for each module, which should be automated based on the parameters. This list will vary from projects to projects and can also be improved to suit your requirements : Similarly, for all modules, this list can be utilized to recognize the automation candidate test cases.

Step 3: Consolidate and group the sum of test cases for each module.

Step 4: Once you have specified all the granular level features, you can illustrate them.

We should also take into account the below characteristics which form the basis of preventing the ROI:

1. Purchasing and licensing cost of the tool
2. Time to develop the scripts
3. Time to maintain the scripts.
4. Time and cost to train the resources.
5. Management overheads

Example of Test Automation ROI Calculation 

In most circumstances, ROI is evaluated for 5 years, but it’s not necessary. Founded on the above components, let us try to explain the calculation of ROI for 5 years. As typical, you can always tailor and improve it.

ROI = Cumulative saving / Investment through automation*100

Manual To Automation Testing

When we try to automate a test suite these are some points which can become a big challenge: 

1. Every test team is different and has an exclusive requirement for automation. We cannot improve a fixed standard, but we can alter a standard that will suit our needs.  Because of this reason, automation does need good support from the management as well as from the development team.
2. Automating a 100% application is a huge task. Not that it is unthinkable, but it needs proper planning and monitoring and of course, some time. There are tons of permutations and combinations of data, several environments with n number of authentication and authorization attributes that require to be validated and thus require a technique to automate.
3. We should have standards that will decide which are the significant test cases. These criteria can be based on many factors like complex business logic, risk-prone areas, areas that are of more interest to clients, etc.
4. Formulating the framework is the most essential facet of automation. We should devote fairly more time to improve the framework than to the script. Whenever we develop the automation plan, framework designing should be the central focus.

You should ‘plan’ to design the framework. Recognize and make a checklist of the items which will form the framework. If the framework is rock solid, scripting and strengthening become manageable.

1. Whenever we think of automation, we instantly jump to understand the programming language or scripting language. Learning this language will assist but the further emphasis should be on creating and developing logic.

Automation should not be the duty of a few handfuls of resources, fairly a full team should contribute towards it. This will enable not only to improve the skills of the resources but yet to keep them motivated.

1. Every tool has a norm to document the test results. To customize it is a difficult task. Reporting the test conclusions also requires coordination and maintenance which extends to the cost.
2. We should believe our automation stuff. We invest man-hours to create an automation suite but still, we don’t trust in the test outcomes. Efforts should be provided to maintain the scripts. Furthermore, we should see that the team who is doing the manual testing of the application, should be involved to automate it as they understand their application.

Maximum of the time, a third-team does the automation so the real testing team is not familiar with the scripts and eventually ends up running the tests manually. In most of the cases, we like to Automate the Regression suite as it includes a bigger number of test cases. In that case, we can crack the regression suits into tinier suits and decide to run the proper suite as per the release requirement.

Let’s say a regression suite includes 1500 test cases, you can break it into 3 suits of 500 test cases per suit and automate it. Rather than automating the whole suite, you can opt for phase-wise automation. In other terms, you can pursue the prototype model for improving the automation suite. Build a structure or framework with the execution of limited numbers of test cases and begin using that and gradually improve it by adding more test cases to it. Being an ongoing activity, priority should be laid on creating the framework appropriately which will conclude in ease of maintenance and executing new features. It needs adequate support from the dev team and management as well. We should facilitate the testing team to participate the most in Automation Testing as they are aware of their product more than anyone else.