The Right Way to Select Automation Testing Tools
Why Do We Need Automation Testing Tools in 2020 (and the following years)?
Recent advancements and the rising adoption of technologies such as artificial intelligence and data-driven selection have reshaped the testing landscape. Improvements in these technologies lead to even more test activities that can be automated. Also, automation is becoming a crucial part of a successful Agile and DevOps transformation. According to Raffi Margaliot in World Quality Report 2019-2020: “In addition to traditional skills, teams must acquire new skills such as mathematical techniques, artificial intelligence, test automation, and security.”
Types of Automation Testing Tools
1. Open-source automation tools
This kind is a free platform that allows users to access and use its source code. Users can adapt the code and modify it for their requirements. Open-source is free of charge and developed by its community.
2. Commercial automation tools
The commercial tool is produced to serve commercial purposes and is usually distributed through subscription plans. Users have to pay a license fee to use the software. Compared with open source automation tools, this kind of tool has more premium features and good customer service that completes the whole testing process for companies or enterprises.
3. Customized frameworks:
There are outstanding projects that a single open-source software or commercial testing tool cannot accomplish the requirements. They are basically due to differences in their testing processes and testing environments. In some cases, teams need to evolve customized software on their own. The custom framework is much more complex than the two above solutions and can be deployed by experts.
How to Select the Right Automation Testing Tools?
First of all, does your team need Automation Testing? Depending on scalable of your business, in many cases, manual testing still plays an important role in this field for specific needs and project requirements. (But if you are interested in the Automation Test, here are several articles are written for you: Automation Testing 101 and Types of Automation Testing)
Because of that, Test Automation is necessary when:
- There are repetitive test cases to be done.
- There are repeated regression tests.
- The team has to reproduce a number of users for performance testing.
- When critical functionalities cannot solely rely on manual testing
After considering for selecting Automation Testing, the right strategy to choose an automation testing tool will help your team minimize costs and times. There are a few things you could notice to choose the right one that fit your requirements:
- Licensing Costs
- Comprehensive Test Report
- Documentation, Tutorials, Guidelines
- CI, DevOps support
- Level of programming skills required
Suggested Tools
Open-source tools
- Selenium (selenium.dev)
- Appium (appium.io)
- Robot Framework (robotframework.org)
- Cucumber (cucumber.io)
Free tools
- Katalon Studio (katalon.com)
Commercial tools
- TestComplete (smartbear.com/product/testcomplete/overview)
- UFT (microfocus.com/en-us/products/uft-one/overview)
