How to choose Automation Testing Tool for your project?
Updated: Jun 2, 2022
Automation testing is not only a reliable and cost-saving strategy but has also proved to improve the team's skillset and efficiency. Organizations are implementing automation with the goal to achieve 100% automation and implementing automation testing as soon as in the development lifecycle.
To accomplish this, companies are following 2 different strategies,
1. Implement open source tools/libraries or
2. Implement a paid and proprietary tool.
Both these have their benefits and shortcomings and hence choosing a correct strategy is vital for automation meeting its expectations.
Shall we go for open source? - Implementing open-source tools comes for free but required the team to be skilled and then a huge amount of effort to develop and maintain the automation framework. Developing a quality and bug-free automation framework will take at least 2-3 months and has this implicit cost.
Shall we go for a proprietary tool? - Implementing a proprietary tool comes with the direct cost upfront but has a shorter learning curve, better quality automation testing with expectation handling and error logging, it has proven capability and overall gives a more organized approach towards automation.
Looking at these factors, selecting an automation tool that suffices our budget, team's skill level, and most importantly our automation goal could be a daunting task. This guide will help you to select an automation tool for your need and will provide a systematic approach to select an automation testing tool.
Key Takeaways
Automation tool selection lays the foundation of the automation journey.
Incorrect tool impacts the overall success of the automation.
Hence decision to select the automation tool needs to be thoroughly evaluated.
New codeless tool available in the market eliminates the need for coding and created more options to choose from.
Selecting an automation tool
To make a choice in selecting an automation tool, first we have to understand the kind of options we have in the market. This will help to broadly understand the pros and cons of each classification and hence save time rather than go at the tool level itself. If we try to classify the automation tools, we can put them into the 3 buckets has mentioned below.
Classification of tools available in the market
Open Source & Free,
Proprietary & Free,
Proprietary & Paid
Now let's understand the opportunities these tools provide and their merits and demerits.
Factors to consider while selecting the testing tool
Now that we are clear with the type of options available in the market, let's understand the factors we should consider while selecting an automation tool. To keep it simple, the most important factors to select an automation tool are -
1. Budget
2. Skill level
3. Test scope
Budget - The budget is the most important factor to start a project. Automation testing is no different. The budget lets us decide whether we can go for paid and proprietary tools or we settle for free and open-source tools.
Skill level - The other thing to consider is the skill level of the team. If the project team what to go for open source tools like selenium, the team should have the required skill level in the team. Else they should hire the required talent to start their automation journey. The other option could be to use proprietary free (like BotPlay) or paid (like Tosca, Perfecto, etc) tools.
Test scope - The third consideration factor is the scope to be tested. Not all tools support all type of testing hence project team need to understand their requirement first before taking a call. For example, there are different tools in the market for API testing, UI testing, DB testing, Mobile testing, desktop app testing, and so on.
Let's figure out how to use these factors to select an automation testing tool.
Let's focus on the first two factors first is budget and coding skills. To make things easier and to approach tool selection in a methodological way, we have created this 2x2 matrix.
As we are now clear with which quadrat we have to go, we further need to select a tool from the quadrant that would suffice our third factor that is - Test Scope. To measure the already shortlisted tools now we have to select one based on the testing need we have. We have another methodological way (called Test Pyramid) to understand the testing landscape that will help us in tool selection.
Automation tool selection using the Test Pyramid
The Test Pyramid is a way to divide testing based on three tech stack tiers (back-end, middle tier, front-end) of the AUT and test the tiers based on the inherent behavior of each tech tier. We can use this concept to play automation testing implementation in our project.
To implement the automation testing using the test pyramid, the task for the testers is to step back and analyze the application’s tech tiers at a higher level. Testers can take help from architects and tech lead in the project to understand and draw the high-level application’s tech stack diagram. Most modern applications’ architecture is based on the three-tier tech stack - back-end, middle tier, front-end. Once we are clear with the application under the test (AUT) tech stack, we can plan to implement automation based on the application’s tech tiers.
Learn - Test Pyramid in detail
Now to choose from the list of codeless/no-code automation testing tools available in the market, we want to introduce the concept of the test pyramid. Test pyramid will help to understand which technology layer of the application under test (AUT) needs our focus and hence which testing tool to choose and implement in our project.
Getting clarity around the application tech stack and hence understanding which layer we have to test, helps to better screen the codeless automation testing tools available in the market. As not all codeless (no-code) automation testing tools provide the capability to test all the layers of a software product, we have divided the tools available in the market as per the tech layer they cater to.
Below is the list of prominent automation testing tools available in the market -
Why choose codeless/no-code automation testing tools over tools that required coding?
Do you write code in Microsoft Outlook or Gmail to send an email? Or to create a new sheet or to add two numbers in Microsoft Excel?
If we have never written code to use these operations, then why we are writing code every time to automate test cases when we have codeless options available. These options are effective, efficient, save cost, and require no advanced skillset.
Codeless or no-code automation testing tools are the next BIG thing and a new way of working in software testing.
What are codeless/no-code automation testing tools?
Codeless or no-code automation tools let teams create automated test cases without writing even a single line of code. It eliminates the need for coding knowledge and anyone can perform automation testing regardless of skill level. Essentially, it means you can create automated test cases using another software that supports codeless automate and doesn't involve any coding at all.
How do codeless/no-code automation testing tools works?
These types of software provide a visual and interactive development environment where the user is able to design, develop and manage software, add additional functionality. It involves clicks or drag and drops mechanisms using those automation test cases that can be created.
Advantages of using codeless/no-code automation tools -
Some of the benefits of codeless automation testing are :
Enable faster release cycle by faster automation testing
Easy to maintain
Saves time & effort
Early start of automation testing in the SDLC
No technical skills are required to develop automation scripts
Continuous testing can be achieved
Easily scalable
How to choose which codeless (no-code) automation testing tool fits my purpose?
The market has seen an increased number of codeless automation testing tools in the last few years. Organizations are shifting towards codeless automation testing tools due to the overheads that come with the custom frameworks like developing a framework, hiring testers with coding skills, sending time in automation maintenance that any code-full automation testing tool brings to the automation testing process, and thus slowing down the overall software delivery.
There are a number of codeless automation tools available in the market, however, each serves a different purpose and tests different areas of software architecture, hence it is important to choose for your use case.
Codeless automation testing tools as designed to test different layers of the test pyramid hence understanding the Test pyramid is the base to choose testing tool.
Why is BotPlay automation a perfect choice for Web UI testing?
BotPlay Codeless Automation is a free-to-use, self-service SaaS product providing a codeless way to automate 100% of your testing & processes on web applications.
Benefits - It is lightweight, portable, and doesn’t need any installation. It is an easy-to-use, no-code automation testing tool that removes manual dependency for automation, provides consistent results and saves testing costs, and generates ROI.
Use cases - If you have any of the below use cases, we would recommend you try out the trial version of BotPlay and gain a comprehensive understanding of the tool and fitment for your use case and project.
Features - The salient features of BotPlay include supporting automation testing scripting in natural language hence ensuring 4x faster automation development with 80% less maintenance compared to other tools and custom frameworks.
How to use BotPlay Codeless Automation
BotPlay Codeless Automation, helps organizations to remain true to their core business priorities and solve their automation testing challenges by providing a codeless UI automation tool that anyone can automate, even a non-technical user for web automation testing.
We would recommend you to download BotPlay, free for the QA community to start automation testing in your project.
Learn - How BotPlay Codeless Automation testing works.
Conclusion
To conclude, automation testing has been proven to helps launch the product faster, and to aid this further, Codeless Automation Testing helps accelerate the process to keep up the market and demand for a faster release cycle. Codeless automation can be made successful by selecting the right tool which should be done thoroughly and judiciously. BotPlay is the 100% codeless automation testing tool that helps teams to achieve their automation testing goals.