The emergence of the global COVID-19 pandemic has forced several enterprises to adopt automation like never before. Industries that were otherwise slow to adopt automation technologies, such as Test Automation, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML), have begun leveraging them and realized their potential. Automation has helped organizations to cut costs during the economic turmoil, providing more agile services to customers, and has enhanced existing operations. 

Even prior to the current pandemic, emerging technologies and integration of Intelligent Automation (IA) were believed to considerably improve workforce efficiency and increase business revenue. The pandemic simply reinforced this belief by ensuring business connectivity was met through automation while employees were apart. As digitalization became the new norm, enterprises rushed to meet customer demands with newer software and applications release every week. Application environments, customer behaviors, trends everything changed suddenly that enterprises were no longer sure whether their solution would be enough for the customers. Businesses had to figure out how they could adapt to rapidly changing conditions, and ensure their applications or software met the dynamic customer needs. Efficiently testing these solutions in the midst of remote working made it even more challenging for enterprises. Most of them had to reskill and upskill the QA workforce to test new business models in the current pandemic era. Soon enterprises understood the potential of critical digital and cognitive capabilities, their benefits, adaptability, and resilience to growing inconsistencies. 

Why is Test Automation Inevitable?

Even before the pandemic, the demand for test automation services was expected to grow exponentially in the coming years. The reduction in the testing process, faster product releases, and rising usage of AI-enabled test scripts were a few of the reasons for the growth. Even advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) were implemented to testing strategies, solving test complexities. Test automation, therefore, was a prominent test strategy that was being used in all aspects of testing, including automation testing, functional testing, regression testing, and performance testing.

Over the years, software development has been continuously moved to DevOps and other high-paced advancements were introduced. Therefore, these software’s have a more frequent requirement to change test environments to ensure that systems work efficiently in every surrounding. Without automation testing, the modeling capacity for tests could be quite challenging, as testing functions can take large annual costs due to additional capacity usage. The evolution of Test Automation has accelerated software deployments without any compromise in quality. Automation has always been advantageous in software or application releases, as it significantly reduces the traditional testing efforts as well as accelerates the complete testing process.

The Need For Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Test Automation.

To obtain the purpose of automation testing, artificial intelligence has become an integral component of software testing tools. Each test cycle accumulates tons of data, which can be leveraged by an AI-based testing tool for identifying and resolving test failures. After each test run or testing cycle, the resultant data can be seamlessly fed back to the AI algorithms. With such growing advantages of integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) in testing, the demand for technology has been increasing. The implementation of AI in the test tools has made it easier for the application or software to self-heal at runtime. Self-healing automation testing helps identify issues at runtime and is anticipated to be one of the most influential automation testing trends, especially in the post-COVID era. The new solution will be capable of leveraging machine learning to optimize testing and quality delivery. It can reduce the need for repeating specific tests, help quality engineers be more efficient, remove bottlenecks, and enhance risk-based testing protocols. 

Even now, during the COVID-19 pandemic crises, significant vendors operating in the market are leaving traditional/manual practices behind and focusing on automating IT operations to recover from the crisis. Businesses will invest more in cognitive capabilities such as artificial intelligence and robotic process automation (RPA) to recover post-COVID-19. The pandemic has made automation imperative than ever before as companies expand business continuity plans and take new risks. 

Benefits of Test Automation During Remote Working

Employees across every domain are currently getting accustomed to working from home. Software development companies are looking for leveraging test automation services that offer remote testing capabilities. With remote testing, enterprises can ensure that they meet time-to-market timelines and the QA teams have the tools and technologies to test remotely. Since test automation services do not excessively depend on human intervention, testing can be seamlessly performed by individuals as well. Testers can utilize AI algorithms that can assist with the entire automation process including, security monitoring, test recovery, and performance monitoring.

• Increase speed and efficiency while reducing testing costs

As mentioned earlier, the COVID-19 pandemic enhanced the need for software applications across multiple domains including e-commerce, digital OTT, healthcare, etc. Enterprises must ensure that the development and deployment of these applications are completed on time as well as they meet customer demands efficiently. QA automation testing and test automation services make it feasible to perform testing from anywhere at any time. Software testing tools can be leveraged from the cloud service models and test scenarios can be distributed in parallel across multiple physical or virtual servers. Automated tests can be completed at a much faster time when compared to manual testing and the number of test cycles is less. This will help the tester to easily identify errors in a fraction of the time, therefore, providing more time to improve other features on the application.

• Improve tester motivation and effectiveness

Manual testing will be extremely difficult to be performed in a remote working environment. It can be mundane, error-prone, and even exasperating for the testers to complete each cycle individually. Continuous repetition of the same test cases with hardly a few modifications in data values can be quite laborious and time-consuming for manual testers. QA test automation services help in mitigating the number of responsibilities for a tester, it integrates AI services that help in repetitive testing while enhancing the repeatability and accuracy of tests. It takes the stress of employees who are working remotely and enables them to focus more on other priority tasks such as risk analysis and exploratory testing.

• Expand test coverage

Sufficient test coverage across every function of an application or software usually demands significant effort from manual testers. They will have to generate hundreds of test cases for each scenario, validate boundary and edge cases, as well as ensure that the application is compatible with every browser, platform, operating system, and device. But with AI-driven automated testing services, test scripts are automatically generated from existing test data, therefore enabling individual testers to cover more scenarios effortlessly. They can also easily repeat test cases across different web browsers or device operating systems to guarantee the software application showcases consistent performance across different platforms.

• Efficient Testing

With easily accessible cloud tools and test scripts, several enterprises leverage test automation to make the testing process extremely efficient. Software or applications are not just tested a single time before deployment, they are repeatedly tested in development cycles to ensure quality. Every time the source code of the software is altered, efficient application tests must be administered. Before the application/software is released, it will have to undergo multiple software testing strategies on different browsers, platforms and devices. Performing such crucial tests manually or remotely is extremely time-consuming, tedious and expensive. In such scenarios, automated tests once created can run continuously without the need for any additional costs. When compared to manual or traditional testing, test automation decreases the time taken to run recurring software tests from days to hours and therefore reduces cost significantly.

• Simulation of user environment 

Ever since cloud computing emerged as an innovative technology that offers secure, fault-tolerant, reliable, and scalable computational service, several enterprises have attempted to harness its benefits. One such benefit in test automation is the advancement in cloud simulation tools. These tools empower both enterprises and individual users working from home to seamlessly evaluate hypotheses on a cloud platform. Here, the use of a real-world simulation-based approach becomes the best alternative way to allow customers to leverage test automation services at less cost in a repeated and controlled environment. 

We understand that a lot of businesses have been highly impacted due to the COVID-19 pandemic and have failed to meet customer/client demands proactively. The lack of skilled or talented testers and automation testing services continue to affect an enterprise’s capability to provide effective solutions and stick to their go-to-market timelines. Faster software delivery, as well as high-quality standard services, is imperative to stay competitive in this fast-changing digital landscape. Our software testing services provide a wide range of QA and testing services for both nearshore and offshore projects. We have the experienced QA resources, tools, infrastructure, labs and test generators to make your testing quicker and much more cost-effective.

We can provide test automation services to your business via several delivery methods. You can hire a full-time test expert to join your organization, or even request ad hoc testing for a situation where you don’t test very frequently. To know more information about QA automation, test automation or to inquire about using our software testing services, submit your contact details and message in the form below.

Author Bio

Ricky Philip is a content strategist, who has an unparalleled dedication to building productive and engaging website content that attracts traffic and increase search engine rankings. If not typing furiously on his keyboard, Ricky is constantly learning ways to enhance search traffic acquisitions.