Top 5 UI Test Automation Tips to Help You Excel

Software testing is a crucial aspect of software development. Without carefully and comprehensively executed tests, no organization can take the guarantee of the quality of their software products. In order to ensure high-quality services and products, it is essential for companies to carry out tests on their software solutions. The global software testing integration market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 15% over the years 2018-2022. Organizations are focusing on delivering a stringent quality of products.

Trends in the software testing industry include test automation. Automated tests are expected to make testing efficient and cost-effective. With automated testing, a lot of manual labour can be saved and invested in the tasks that really need a human's logic. It has become integral for companies to incorporate advanced software methods into their software development strategies.

But, there are some hurdles along the way. A lot many engineers and software testing professionals complain about the instability and lack of reliability in automated UI tests. These anomalies can be warded off with the right approach to automated UI testing. Here are some quick tips to get you started-

• Skills + Tools – It is often a misconception that the right tool is the most crucial aspect of UI testing. But the fact is that you need the right set of people to work with the tools. With a great team of testing enthusiasts who know how to build stable tests and are 100% confident of their skills, you can cut down testing costs and deliver products that are exceptional in terms of quality.

• Design Patterns and Principles – It is highly advisable to follow design patterns. Design patterns are reusable solutions for common issues in software designing. And, design principles govern how a software solution should be constructed. As UI testing is not a relatively new field, there are design principles and patterns you can use for easier navigation. Page Objects is the most popular web UI automation pattern, followed by Screenplay.

• Minimize the use of Thread. Sleep () - The exact timeout should be avoided as often as possible. Web applications depend on the network speed and connectivity, and when you don't have the right infrastructure, you may feel inclined to stall your test execution for a specific number of seconds using the Thread.sleep() method. Adding this method takes away the stability of the automated tests, which is not your goal here. Instead, implicit and explicit waits should be used, offered by Selenium test automation tool.

• Testing Browser Compatibility – For testing the compatibility of the UI of the web app on different browsers, it is not necessary to test the app on all browsers. Instead, a test suite should be created that will give you an idea about the UI compatibility on all browsers. By doing so, you can significantly save your time and costs and complete UI test automation earlier, than you would have imagined.

• Automating Unstable Features – When it comes to test automation services, it becomes a daunting task to test a feature that is not yet stabilized. The business' need for the feature may change over time and all your efforts that went into building its UI tests may go in vain. To prevent that from happening, it is advised to test only the features that have been developed and completed.

These automation tips can help you deliver exceptional UI experiences to your customers. However, the critical area remains in choosing the right tools and the right people. Everything boils down to these two areas of test automation. Choose them wisely and steer your UI automation journey in the right direction.

You may like to go through a guideline on How to Integrate Selenium Grid with Docker?

Jessica Cyrus has started her career as a QA- Engineer at Nexsoftsys,which is a software consulting company.