Key Benefits Delivered by Scriptless Automation

The testing of software systems has become critical for businesses to deliver quality, a superior customer experience, and competitiveness. And test automation has become the go-to methodology for testers to reduce errors due to manual testing. It accelerates the process of testing and reduces the turnaround time for project delivery. However, test automation is not without its flaws. Since its success depends on the quality of tools being used, businesses are looking at scriptless test automation to deliver ROI. So, the moot question is: are test automation tools to be blamed for delivering wrong results? Probably not, for the capability of test automation tools is not the fall guy. The answer probably lies in the difficulty of writing scripts for automation and maintaining them, less involvement of subject matter experts or project owners, and a long time to create the suite in the first place.

Scriptless test automation allows non-programmers or non-technical resources to perform low-code test automation and achieve the desired results. Here, coding is mostly taken care of by the tool, thereby reducing time and achieving a faster time to market. Besides being one of the top software trends in 2021, automation testing without coding is expected to surpass $35 billion by 2026 (Source: GlobeNewswire Research). Let us discuss the benefits of executing test automation without coding in the below-mentioned segment.

Benefits of scriptless test automation

With the quality of software applications majorly deciding their success in the market, software testing using test automation has become critical. The host of benefits that businesses will accrue for themselves by implementing scriptless test automation are as follows:

1. Saving time: To reduce the turnaround time for software delivery, automation of the test script should be made faster. For instance, scriptless automation can help testing teams automate test suites faster by 1.5X. This can reduce the delivery time of software applications, especially when major software releases are in the offing. The time saved can thus be utilized in ensuring more test coverage. Consequently, more bugs can be detected in the early stages of the SDLC.

2. Reliable and easy to maintain: Codeless automated testing is one of the easiest and most reliable ways to implement test automation and maintain the test suites. If automation suites are not maintained well and reused, they can deliver erroneous results. However, with scriptless test suites, maintenance becomes a breeze. Also, it is easy to make changes in the suite if the software application under test changes. This tantamount to increasing the response time and agility of the testing process. Any script-based test automation suite is likely to fail during maintenance. This is because the framework of such a suite is not built by taking into consideration aspects such as maintainability, reusability, and traceability. On the other hand, a codeless automation suite maintains the traceability of all reusable components. This makes the latter suitable for implementing object-oriented test automation.

3. Saves money on training resources: Implementing a script-based test suite for automation can be a challenge. This is primarily due to the need to hire outside resources or train the existing ones which costs money, time, and effort. The utility of resources can only be felt if they know the particular programming language to write test suites in. Here, it is only the expertise of a tester in the tool-based programming language that can pass muster. However, this is not always easier to achieve, for not every resource is likely to possess expertise in a specific programming language. The only solution is to train the individual(s) or outsource the job to test automation services. These two approaches are certainly time-consuming and cost-intensive. Besides, the newly trained resources may not work at their optimal speed and there can be issues with their quality of work initially.

On the other hand, codeless testing does not require resources with advanced programming skills. This precludes the need for training and investing money in hiring expensive resources. In fact, manual testers can do the needful, thereby utilizing their services optimally. So, what happens to the automation engineers if scriptless test automation becomes the norm across domains? Companies can utilize their services by deploying them for more critical areas of research. These include DevOps pipelines, unit testing, white box testing, and others. They can use their expertise to design the scriptless test suites and then leave the job of testing to others.

1. Precludes tool-specific coding: Test automation is mostly tool-dependent, which can limit its efficiency. Scriptless automation, on the other hand, can enable manual testers to write scripts using actions and objects. This can make such a tool vendor and language independent and allow testers to change technologies on demand. Scriptless tools can hide all language complexities and allow testers to learn only a single user experience.
2. Participation of all stakeholders: Non-technical people such as business analysts, managers, and others, can find coding difficult to comprehend. As a result, they may shy away from the process of test automation and the results generated thereof. Their lack of involvement can mean costly errors to be ignored or even a lack of rigor on the part of testers. However, codeless automation can bring such people into the world of testing and allow them to strategize and review test cases. It allows domain experts to participate in the test automation exercise thereby reducing the chances of software malfunction upon delivery. The scriptless approach to testing can facilitate communication between technical experts and other non-technical stakeholders.

Conclusion

Scriptless or codeless automation can accrue a host of benefits for business enterprises. These include time and cost savings, and quality outcomes. This approach can cater to the requirements of agile testing and make the software application qualitatively superior, maintainable, and result-oriented.

Source: Medium