CI For Automation Testing Framework

Let us consider that you have a critical project idea, and you want to set up an automation testing framework. A complex mobile application will need a lot of iteration right from the beginning. The complexities of the application may arise due to frequent changes in functionalities, adding new features, and running regression frequently to validate the changes. This will sway your project back and forth, consuming time, money, and effort, and the result will not equal up the effort made.

To end all the confusion, CI (continuous integration)/ CD (continuous deployment or delivery) is introduced at the very beginning of the software development lifecycle. The process offers a stable development environment and facilitates the automation testing framework with speed, safety, and reliability. It eliminates the challenges like lack of consistency and the numerous errors that arise due to human intervention of an application development process, ensuring that the users receive an error-free, end-product with a seamless user experience.  

What is CI/CD?

Technically speaking, CI/CD is a method that is frequently used to deliver apps to customers by using automation early in the app development stage. The main concepts associated with CI/CD include continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment.

We can think of it as a solution to various problems for the development and operations team while integrating new code.

With the introduction of CI/CD, developers have ongoing automation and continuous monitoring during the lifecycle of an application – be it the integration phase, testing phase, or delivery and deployment phase.

When we combine all these practices, it can be called the ‘CI/CD pipeline.’ Both development and operation teams work together in an agile way, either through a DevOps approach or site reliability engineering (SRE) approach.

Automation testing in CI/CD

Automation testing in CI/CD helps the QA engineers define, execute, and automate various tests. These tests allow the developers to access the performance of their applications in an innovative manner.

It can tell them whether their app build has passed or failed. Moreover, it can help in functionality testing after every sprint and regression for complete software.

Regression tests can run on their local environments before sending the code to the version control repository to save the team’s time.

However, automation testing isn’t confined to regression tests. Various other tests, such as static code analysis, security testing, API testing, etc., can be automated.

The central concept is to trigger these tests through web service or other tools that can result in success or failure.

Test automation framework runs on a set of guidelines, rules, and regulations. DevOps team needs to implement a proper test strategy following these guidelines, rules, and regulations before they start the testing process. They have to set the process right and decide when to introduce CI during the entire software testing lifecycle, when to start the execution, and the deployment process. Some of the key points to consider:

  • Evaluating test automation frameworks: Ensuring codeless representation of automated tests, that support data-driven tests, and concise reporting.
  • Choose the test automation framework based on the requirement: The different types of test automation framework include modular testing framework, data-driven framework, keyword-driven framework, and hybrid framework.
  • Defining the objective for automation: This is an important step where the objective of the test automation must be set clear. It includes choosing the right tools, skillsets, framework, current requirements, and considering the future trends.
  • Defining the benefits of the automation framework: Considering the benefits of the automation framework for faster test script creation, longer automation span, easy maintenance, reusability probability, and good data migration support.
  • Automation compliance: Testing the software for the latest regulatory compliance.

Benefits of deploying a CI/CD pipeline in automation testing framework

Wondering why a team should work on CI/CD pipeline? Here are some of the benefits associated with it:

  • Boosts DevOps efficiency

In the absence of CI/CD, developers and engineering teams are under immense pressure while carrying out their daily tasks. It could be due to service interruptions, outages, and bad deployments.

With the help of CI/CD, teams can eliminate manual tasks and thereby prevent coding errors. In addition, it will help them detect problems before deployment. This way, teams can work faster without having to compromise on the quality. Furthermore, since the manual tasks are automated, the release rates also decrease.

  • Smaller code changes

A significant technical benefit of CI/CD is that it helps integrate small pieces of code at one time. Therefore, it gets much easier and simpler to handle as compared to huge chunks of code. Also, there will be fewer issues to be fixed at a later stage.

With the help of continuous testing, these small codes can be tested as soon as they are implemented. It is a fantastic approach for large development teams working remotely or in-office.

  • Freedom to experiment

The CI/CD approach helps developers experiment with various coding styles and algorithms with much lesser risk than traditional software development paradigms.

If the experiment does not work as expected, it won’t ever appear in the production and can be undone in the next iteration set. This feature of competitive innovation is a decisive factor behind the fame of the CI/CD approach.

  • It improves reliability

With the help of CI/CD, you can improve test reliability to a great extent. It is because specific and atomic changes are added to the system. Therefore, the developers or QAs can post more relevant positive and negative tests for the changes. This testing process is also known as ‘Continuous Reliability’ within a CI/CD pipeline. This approach helps in making the process more reliable.

  • Customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is an essential aspect of the success of any product or application. It is a crucial factor that should be considered while releasing a new app or updating an existing one.

With the help of CI/CD, bugs are fixed while it is still in the development phase. Through automated Software Testing for Continuous Delivery, the feedback from the users is easier to integrate into the system. When you offer bug-free and quick updates on your app, it will help boost customer satisfaction.

  • Reduces the time to market

Another essential feature that makes CI/CD popular is the deployment time. The time to market plays a crucial role in the success of your product release. It helps increase engagement with your existing customers, gain more profit, support pricing, and get more eyeballs.

When you launch the product at the right time in the market, the product’s ROI will surely increase.

These are just a few benefits of CI/CD. It isn’t just a tool for software development but also an approach to set your business as a leader in the market.

Conclusion

CI/CD is an essential aspect of software building and deployment. It facilitates building and enhancing great apps with faster delivery time. Furthermore, continuous testing automation enables the app to go through the feedback cycle quicker and build better and more compatible apps.

Why Yethi for your projects?

Organizations need strategies and a customized testing environment to offer continuous testing with every integration and deployment. You cannot go wrong with the implementations. Our approach towards building an automation testing framework is agile. We offer continuous testing for all your integration and deployment ensuring that you get a stable, safe, and scalable product. The robotic capabilities of Tenjin – our codeless test automation platform, which enable to learn and adapt to the application and its updates. Tenjin, is a plug-and-play banking aware solution, continuous testing, minimizing the manual effort and speed up the test execution regardless of the complexity and number of updates.

Importance of Automated Regression Testing

As technology is advancing, the software gets subjected to various new and improved features. Such integrations may cause errors/bugs in the system not allowing it to function accurately. Hence, regression testing is conducted to test the entire software to understand its behavior upon the addition of new integrations and identify any bugs arising due to the same. This is true for even minor code changes or any alterations made across the process. Simply put, regression testing ensures that the software or the piece of code that was previously developed and tested still behaves in the same way after the code has been changed or altered.

Carrying out regression testing manually can be a tedious task, and due to its mundane and repetitive nature, manual regressions may not be fruitful. Hence, regression testing is automated to ensure consistency and accuracy while avoiding human errors.

Significance of Automated Regression Testing

Incorporating manual regression testing can be a draining experience as it involves a lot of time and effort. Further, its tedious nature is prone to causing high errors. With the ever-changing technology, the process is getting complex and manually handling regressions cannot be considered a feasible option. Including automated testing as a part of the product development strategy is what most organizations are doing today.

Automation testing yields the best outcomes with optimal time and resource requirements. It focuses on conducting accurate regression to create products of higher quality, which in turn will offer a seamless customer experience. It streamlines the process, improves workflow efficiency, delivers the effective solution, and speeds up turnaround time.

Benefits of implementing automated regression testing:

Saves Time and Effort: Automated regression testing can handle repetitive tasks effortlessly and efficiently in lesser time, hence, saving significantly on time, cost, and effort.

Reliability: Automating regression testing will reduce human errors considerably while ensuring accuracy and consistency on the outcome. Their accurate and consistent nature makes the process reliable compared to manual regressions.

Tests running round the clock: One of the major advantages of automating regressions is that tests can be initiated and executed any time, i.e., tests running 24/7 and results being generated constantly.

Cost-effective: The reusable nature of test cases significantly reduces the cost of test case generation, making the whole process cost-effective.

Improved ROI: Automating regressions may seem to be a little more expensive than including expenses for buying tools, initial setup costs, and investing in writing test cases. However, this maybe a one-time investment; it yields good results in the long run adding to improve ROI metrics.

Early detection of bugs: Testers will be able to spot problems and defects earlier in the software development cycle thanks to automation.

Steps involved in Automated Regression Testing

Choosing the suitable test cases

Choosing which tests to re-run for regression testing is a combination of technology awareness, clarity on requirements, and intuition. Whether you’re performing priority testing or subset testing, the goal is to increase the likelihood of triggering any regression that has been introduced. Choosing the right test case from the repository is the most critical step that determines the success/failure of the testing process. Choosing the right test case is an indication that half work is done successfully, the rest remain in executing it with the right tools.

Regression test execution

Before the advent of autonomous testing, ensuring that your tests are effectively scripted is a prerequisite for good regression testing. If a test requires the system to be in a specific state, try sequencing tests to reduce the number of times you must change the state. Make sure your test suite produces data that is straightforward to understand. It should be simple to figure out which cases were unsuccessful and what the system was up to at the time. Occasionally, you’ll see apparent failures resulting from incorrect configurations.

Maintaining regression tests

Like any other tool, automated regression testing is only as good as the people who use it. And, like any suitable instrument, it needs to be cared for and maintained. When new test cases are produced, consider whether they should be included in the regression tests. “Does this bug need to be added to the regression testing?” you should ask yourself whenever you patch an actual bug in your code. In most circumstances, the response will be “Yes.” You should, however, include tests that check the functionality of any new code paths.

Why Is Automated Regression Testing Right for Your Project?

Organisations build software applications to provide value to the customers. With time, these applications need change, or the developer may look to add more functionalities and features to the software based on the customer requirements. With each change in code or functionalities, the app becomes more and more complex. Hence tests for regression issues should be added more frequently with every update. Automated regression testing could be a boon for such organisations.

Here are some of the reasons why automated regression testing could be suitable for your project:

  • get higher test coverage
  • get continuous results
  • higher test efficiency
  • fast results
  • reusability of tests

Yethi for Automated Regression Testing Solutions

Yethi is the market leader in offering software QA solutions to global banks and financial institutions. Yethi’s test automation platform, Tenjin, is capable of handling efficient regression testing for complex banking and financial system. It has proven to offer nearly 100% accuracy in regression scenarios, and its half-a-million test case repository cuts immensely on the cost.

Tenjin is a 5th generation test automation platform with robotic UI capabilities which can automatically learn and relearn without manual intervention. It offers high test coverage and has the ability to test even the complex banking/financial system with utmost ease.