Title: Changing Trends for Test Automation Tools
1 Changing Trends for Test Automation
Tools
2 Changing Trends for Test Automation
Tools
Software Testing and Quality Assurance has been
evolving constantly to deliver better results
with effective validation. Test Automation has
been a major boost to the overall testing cycle,
especially with the contribution of various
licensed and open-source tools. Over the last few
years, a major shift has been happening towards
the open-source test automation tools,
especially, with growing popularity of automation
platforms such as Selenium. Additionally, there
are many more open source automation platforms
coming up to deal with the concerns and
requirements around speed and integration in the
development process. Sometimes organizations and
development/testing teams get confused while
selecting a tool from a plethora of
tools/automation platforms available in the
market. Simultaneously, a lot of time and effort
goes in deploying the tool and getting the
resources trained on the same. Hence, the
decision to adopt the tool has to be a strategic
decision based on aspects such as business
objectives, growth plan, nature of the
application, or any allied business
requirements. So, with changing circumstances
and requirements, how do you gauge the varying
trends in the open-source tools category?
Understanding these trends is absolutely business
critical, as it helps to align them with your
business needs and do what is relevant and not
just a random implementation. These are some of
the benchmarks or parameters that can be
considered while understanding the trends and
embedding these learnings within your development
and testing strategy. Ultimately, the rationale
and logic that you would apply while observing
the trends and applying them for your business
applications will define the applications
agility and sustainability even in the longer run.
3Changing Trends for Test Automation Tools
- Today, an open source automation tool or any tool
for that matter is selected on the basis of some
set parameters that more or less define the trend
in the automation segment. - Most critically, every tool must provide the ease
of script development and smoothly facilitate
script execution too. The overall framework must
support agile processes and even minor
alterations from time to time. - Today, collaboration between teams is absolutely
essential and it overall determines successful
application development. Hence, the tool must
facilitate cohesive working amongst teams during
the implementation and execution process as well.
For instance, the QA and Development teams should
be able to simultaneously work with the same
tool. These aspects are defining the way
automation platforms are being development and
enhanced. - The platform should be able to align with the
test development language, which kind of gives a
breather to the testing and development teams.
For instance, a particular language for iOS and
another for Android. - The tool must provide automation support for
testing on both real devices as well as
emulators/simulators too. - Ultimately, the varying application development
needs are creating complexities in the testing
and development cycles. These requirements are
being incorporated by various tools and platforms
to meet two critical business objectives Speed
and Quality. - As mentioned earlier, Selenium has already
created a mark and has been one of the most
popular open source test
4 Changing Trends for Test Automation Tools
- frameworks in the market. Apart from Selenium,
there are some other open-source test automation
frameworks as well, which have been considered by
teams to ease and accelerate the testing process. - Some quick examples to come up with are
- Appium, a framework for mobile native, web and
hybrid apps. - Calabash, a Behaviour-driven development (BDD)
test framework. - Espresso, an open-source test automation
framework from Google with Android Studio. - XCUITest, an open-source test automation
framework by Apple within XCode IDE. - TestCafe, a functional testing automation tool
that has been getting popular amongst experts. - Cypress, is an end-to-end test automation
framework that can run across browsers. - Read Full Blog at
- https//www.cigniti.com/blog/changing-trends-for-t
est-automation-tools/
5