As automated testing becomes commonplace, it is important that testers are aware of which testing processes they can automate to make their testing strategy more efficient. Before integrating automated testing into the workflow make sure that all the test that you are going to do automatically needs to be done repeatably, requires high speed, and are business-critical. At the same time make sure to test manually constantly changing and one-off or ad-hoc tests. Today, we are looking at how you can incorporate automated testing into acceptance tests such as A/B testing.
Read on for more information.
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What Is Acceptance Testing?
Once testing has completed the system testing process during app development, the product needs to be handed over to customers and users to test the application’s acceptability. Essentially, testers need to make sure the product or application is faultless and meets all major business requirements. Acceptance testing allows developers to verify end-to-end business flows in a real-world setting.
Why Do You Need to Do Acceptance Tests?
Even when system testing has been signed-off and successful, acceptance testing is a necessary part of the testing process. Acceptance tests are quite repetitive and are traditionally time-consuming. However, they are useful for numerous reasons. Some of these include:
- Finding issues that were missed during other testing phases, like the functional or system testing phase.
- Seeing how well the application or product is developed.
- Understanding whether the product delivers what the customers actually need.
- Providing feedback and thoughts on how the product could improve its performance or enhance the user experience.
- Improve the testing process in the future by having RCAs as input.
- Minimizing and eliminating any potential issues that may occur in the released product.
What Is Performance Testing and A/B Testing?
Performance testing and A/B testing are two forms of acceptance tests.
The performance testing process helps identify a system’s responsiveness and stability under a certain workload in software quality assurance testing.
A/B testing refers to the method of comparing different versions of an application or webpage to see which one works better. This is sometimes referred to as split testing and bucket testing.
It is possible to automate both of these testing types to save your team time and effort, releasing a faultless application or software sooner rather than later.
Automating acceptance tests
Every company wants to achieve its goals as quickly and as cheaply as possible. Many companies are looking for automated processes to make their software development process more efficient and less costly.
Traditional manual tests are time-consuming, and the results are often reliable. The amount of time spent on tests can lead to mistakes and reduce tester morale. Automated acceptance tests are often the go-to for immediate feedback on business objectives.
Automated acceptance tests have numerous benefits, including:
- A smaller workload for testers, who can direct their attention to other testing tasks.
- Reducing the overall testing runtime.
- Allows for regression testing in the future.
- Allows testers to focus on exploratory testing.
- Increases testing coverage and the overall performance of the test suite.
- Allows tests to find errors in the system at their exact point rather than trawling through test results for hours.
How to Decide Which Acceptance Tests Should Be Automated?
Testers need to use a risk-based testing method to decide which acceptance test processes need to be automated.
There are numerous variables to consider:
Are you building a new application?
If you are building a new product you should probably automate less at the start until you understand the acceptance tests required and how they can help. However, once you understand the application further, you can build automated acceptance tests that greatly reduce testing time. After a few months on the project, you should have a good idea about the main performance risks and where the team is likely to make mistakes.
Is it an already-established product?
If so, you’ll have access to a ton of data regarding bugs and be able to write automated acceptance tests that are likely to spot similar issues, rather than being caught by surprise later on.
Are you adding a new tool or framework?
If you are adding a new tool or framework to a product, you’re likely to make many mistakes. As such, automated tests are a good way to pick up on these mistakes quickly, so you don’t got down venture too far down a path and have to redo all your work.
What Is the Impact of Issues Found in Acceptance Testing?
Any issues found in the acceptance testing phase should see as vitally important and need to be rectified straight away. Testers would also need to conduct a Root Cause Analysis on any issues found. The testing team is responsible for providing RCA’s on any acceptance issues and also making the testing process more efficient.
Any valid issues during this phase will affect the testing and development team, especially when it comes to ratings, first impressions, and customer surveys. These issues may also point to shortcomings in the overall testing process, so it’s important they are dealt with accordingly. As such, automated acceptance testing is the best way to find issues quickly.
