Automation testing has become a generic process in software testing that helps QAs test their applications quickly. Almost every organization relies on it to test most of their software products. With the innovation of new technologies like AI and ML, automation testing keeps getting new updates every now and then. Today, enterprises want to get the most value out of their software testing cycles, which requires keeping track of the latest testing trends and practices.
With enormous changes in the software field, it’s a bit challenging for QAs to keep up with the latest test automation trends. Also, identifying which trends are more impactful than others is no less than a headache. In 2021, automation testing will reach new heights and landmarks with evolving technologies and digital transformation.
In this article, we have covered the top six test automation trends that you cannot ignore in 2021 if you want to leverage automation to its maximum potential.
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Post Contents
Adoption of AI and ML for Automation Testing
In the past few years, artificial intelligence and machine learning have made a greater impact on the IT industry. And it is growing with multiple AI-based apps that we use in our daily lives. It is believed that AI global investment will reach $200 billion by 2025. So, we can assume that it will transform test automation in multiple ways. A few areas where AI is currently used in test automation include:
- To identify exceptional test cases that require both manual and automated tests in log analytics
- For predictive analysis by evaluating the key parameters and specifications of end-user behaviors and determine app areas to concentrate on
- Helps determine and eliminate unnecessary and redundant test cases in test suite optimization
- Identify defective areas in an application that could be risky for your company
AI and ML can be leveraged in multiple ways to optimize the testing practices and improve the automation strategies. Machine learning algorithms in automation can expand human intelligence by forecasting possible outcomes of user behavior with historical data. And in the future, we can expect better analytics-related initiatives from ML.
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Automation Testing for Agile and DevOps
Organizations are already moving to agile development and DevOps due to the changing requirements and demand for software development speed. Without automation, agile projects are no more different than a waterfall project, which is a chapter of old school now. Automation testing is a reliable approach for Agile and DevOps, as it is capable of covering higher test cases and providing quality products with instant feedback and response.
Test automation is becoming the center of attraction for Agile, as more than 40% of IT companies are already using automation tools to automate their testing practices.
One such tool that is widely appraised by IT companies is LambdaTest, which is equipped with advanced functionalities, including:
- Supports more than 2000+ browsers, OS, and devices for cross browser testing
- Offers web app testing across both Android and iOS mobile devices and browsers
- Easy integration with bug logging tools and project management tools to find log issues quickly
- Allow you to test locally hosted websites or applications on your system
- Integrated with Selenium Grid to improve your test coverage with an online infrastructure
- Offers continuous parallel testing to shorten your test cycles by multiple folds
- Supports multiple testing frameworks for web app testing, including JUnit, Behave, NUnit, AngularJS, PHPUnit, etc.
- Provides effortless screenshot testing, record and playback facility to fasten your testing cycles
- Comes with WordPress and Chrome extension for easy web page testing
- Get constant support from a team of technical experts
According to a survey, it is believed that the automation testing market might hit the $28.8 billion mark by 2024. This clearly proves how automation testing is becoming a crucial activity for agile methodologies.
On the other hand, DevOps removes the boundaries between development, testing, and operations to increase the deployment speed, reduce the time to market, and promote higher ROI. With test automation, the overall process becomes much faster than expected while improving the overall CI/CD pipeline.
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Reduction in Coding for Automated Testing
Earlier, QAs need to create multiple test scripts to test an application, which has slightly reduced to writing a few scripts only. But in 2021, we will see more codeless automated testing than ever before. There are many automation tools built on AI and visual modeling technology, which require no coding at all. Using these tools, QAs can quickly build test scripts without any coding knowledge.
Codeless automated testing is going to be one of the top trends in automation testing in 2021. It is beneficial for testers in multiple ways, such as:
- Codeless tests are created without any code, making it easier for testers to read and review them quickly without any coding knowledge. It means even non-technical users can review the test cases effortlessly.
- It doesn’t require QAs to learn new programming languages, which helps a company save its resources, costs, and time.
- Creating codeless test cases is pretty simple as it doesn’t require any coding knowledge or experience, which saves time for the QAs.
Codeless Test Automation Tools
At present, there are many test automation tools available in the market that don’t require any coding.
- Katalon: It is an A-Z codeless test automation tool that can help you throughout the entire software development cycle. It is ideally prepared to fulfill the demand of scalability and ROI for businesses by achieving their continuous testing requirements.
- Functionize: Uses machine learning algorithms to execute functional tests while executing test cases rapidly without any script.
- Applitools: Based on visual AI, it offers a comprehensive test platform for digital transformation experts.
- Leapwork: LEAPWORK Automation Platform is an all-in-one productivity tool for automating repetitive processes, from software functional testing to business verification.
- TestCraft: An AI-based test automation tool ideally used for continuous testing and regression testing of web applications.
Some of these tools even offer additional features that make it easy for testers to perform automation testing.
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Increasing Demand for IoT and Big Data
Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the fastest-growing concepts in the IT field. It is reported that the number of interconnected gadgets reached 20 billion in 2020, which clearly represents the massive expansion of an IoT test strategy. At present, QAs need to test a combination of devices, protocols, platforms, and operating systems, which is quite innumerable. Thus, the testing market will definitely notice a rise in the compatibility, security, performance, and usability testing demand. Right now, only a few companies have implemented IoT in their testing processes. However, this trend will grow in the upcoming months.
Another thing that will take test automation by storm in 2021 is Big Data. Almost every organization needs to cope with immense data volume and different data forms, which is not that simple. And the process of mining any structured or unstructured data is defined as big data, which also requires end-to-end testing. Big data testing helps in making informed decisions with accurate data validations and big data analysis.
However, the increase in the Big Data market’s global value is due to the growing number of IoT devices used worldwide. If businesses are heavily dependent on large data sets, performing big data testing is crucial as it ensures accuracy, integrity, reliability, and quality of data. There is no doubt that data is the new king of building market strategies. Thus, the need for big data testing will grow in 2021.
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Performance Testing transform into Performance Engineering
A software application can be accessed over multiple platforms and devices. And that number of platforms defines the captured market share for the application. Besides, user experience plays a vital role in driving rapid changes, frequent releases, and shorter development cycles for the application. This has enabled software companies to change their priorities to a user-focused approach for developing quality applications. Companies are now more focused on building applications with less performance issues at the beginning of their life cycle.
The performance testing objectives like scalability, speed, accuracy, and application stability are now measured under varied circumstances. In most cases, QAs analyze the objectives to understand the root cause of performance issues in SDLC.
This scenario has evolved in performance engineering now, enabling QAs to develop critical performance metrics in the initial development stages. Performance engineering allows testing teams to examine every single element of the system, business value, and counting customers before the app becomes available for them.
Lack of the performance of an application directly impacts the market value of a company. Getting that value back on track is not a one-day task. Thus, it’s vital to analyze your application at every stage of development for performance. In 2021, we will observe performance engineering as one of the trending things in software development.
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API and Service Test Automation
According to Gartner, it is predicted that around 1/3rd of enterprises will deploy a multitudinous-experience development platform to support the web and mobile development. In the past, API has not been utilized to its maximum capability to fulfill the digital economy. But it has given many innovations to the IT field, which is why most enterprises are still practicing on it to bring new apps.
If API and services are utilized across client applications and components, it’ll be more effective and efficient for them. Also, with microservice architecture enhancement on software development, API usage is increasing every day. Most QAs use APIs for almost every application component, which increases the demand for API and services testing.
Moreover, it is a bit challenging for testers and developers to choose the right processes, tools, and solutions for API automation. Thus, having adequate knowledge of API testing tools and practices like LambdaTest is also necessary for QAs.
Conclusion
Multiple trends might rule test automation in 2021, and we surely can’t miss any of them. However, we must keep track for the top testing trends that will dominate test automation in the upcoming months. This article highlights the top six testing trends that might rule in 2021. Keeping an eye out for these trends is your responsibility as a tester, developer, or QA professional.
