Make QA Automation work for You… not the other way about..!!

Philip Siegel

· 27 Aug 2021

Make QA Automation work for You… not the other way about..!!

Software Product Organizations face various challenges and they have only increased with today’s fast paced Go-To-Market needs. Perhaps the biggest challenge is continuous improvement in Software Engineering maturity thereby achieving superior Product Quality & reduction in Cost of Quality across the value chain. This is also about making it more Predictable which means smoother Release Cycles and packing those important additional Features in to Releases. If we ask the Product Manager, of all these challenges, the biggest will be to balance between achieving the Timelines vs. achieving the Quality for the Release. With shrinking timelines, Managers would love to have anything & everything that will help in achieving the Quality for each Release. QA Automation was brought in the picture precisely for this. But then, why is this problem not solved yet?Maturity awareness
Perhaps the starting point is to understand the current maturity level of the product group in general. At a novice level, though QA Automation is known as a set of Tools to accelerate Functional Testing, Automation will work for you only if it is implemented differently based on maturity of the product group. Most of the cases, this understanding is not translated in to actual implementation which results in either an Automation implementation that is way ahead of the current process capabilities or way behind expectations, both leading to Automation Frameworks that don’t fit well and hence poor adoption and failure of the entire initiative.

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There are probably 4 levels in this maturity ladder

Standing on the shore – This is actually beginner level & may or may not have a separate manual QA team. Often times, the Developers & Managers double up as QA folks and do hands-on testing. No thoughts have been put in to QA Automation feasibility and no budgets are planned as well. But with lots of buzz around higher RoI with QA Automation, chances are some R&D level activity is going on in bits to gather better understanding.
Wading through the shallow – Initial step is crossed and a few alternatives in terms of Tools are identified along with a matrix of features available, technology compatibility, platform availability, etc. along with pricing. Most times, Automation implementation is viewed as a choice of Tool & its pricing which is immediately visible and hence enough attention is not given to medium to long-term planning through Framework development for reusability, accommodating for Feature changes and Scalability for future.

Swimming in safe waters – An Automation Tool is chosen and a Framework is implemented. But the areas that are automated are only in the periphery and hence only a small portion of the entire Regression suite is converted to automation test cases. New Features added in further Releases are not effectively added to regression suite and hence the automation framework is not delivering the value it can and this is mainly due to poor planning and coordination between product management, developers and QA folks.

Battling high tide – Automation is working in many critical scenarios but there are so many moving parts with rapid changes to the way information is handled and delivered together with increasing complexities in security, privacy, compliance, data management, etc. Newer technology platforms need to be accommodated within or between Releases, like testing for compatibility with newer Mobile handsets, etc. Features are not exactly the same across multiple platforms. Different end-Clients have different customized versions of applications running and hence the need to maintain as many regression suites as needed. In all, it is about planning QA Automation with many moving parts and targets and hence the need for continuous framework integration and evolution.

Whichever level of maturity you are in, a proven approach is to sign up with the right Partner in an extended engineering team model with offshore or dual-shore capabilities who will then access your maturity & needs and plan out the right QA Automation strategy that will work for you…

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