Best Practices to Manage Test Automation Effectively


Software quality assurance and testing are an important part of every application development lifecycle. Most of the enterprises and test engineers today prefer automation testing due to the whole host of benefits offered by it. There is no denying that the easy learning curve with minimal time and effort in testing are the coolest things that testers and enterprises can leverage from test automation, however, it sometimes becomes difficult to perform projects due to difficulty in managing test automation resources and test cases accurately.

So how to manage your test automation projects and achieve the desired productivity from your test automation project?
The answer lies in following the some standard practices. Here are the 5 ways of managing your test automation projects effectively and make the most out of your test automation efforts.
1. Plan Your Test Cases & Test Suites
The foremost thing before starting test automation is to plan your test cases and test suites. Beginning test automation without appropriate planning of test cases can result in uncertainty and unexpected results due to non-availability of correct steps and test scenarios. Planning of test cases and test suites is equally important for managing the test assets for future use. If the test plans are informed to the developers, it also helps in prioritizing the development and testing efforts in the right direction, eliminating the unnecessary and lesser important processes.
2. Centralize Your Test Assets
In order to enable effective management of your automated test projects, it is also important that you centralize all your test assets through a common repository for quicker and smoother access. Centralization of test assets will help get rid of the overheads of the distributed resources, plus it can help you share resources with development teams. With centralization, you can also organize your test assets to maintain their integrity and reusability for future projects.
3. Differentiate Test Objects
For successful test automation projects, differentiate good test objects from the bad ones. This will help you run tests faster, improve the testing process, reduce costs and time for test designing. On the other hand, it will also help you get rid of the repetitive test execution so that you can spend more time on test design, drive repeatability of regression tests and achieve better test coverage for good tests.
4. Validate & Remove Outdated Test Cases
With time, applications undergo changes in order to accommodate future requirements, which means you need to validate and alter test cases to suit these requirements. Performing validity checks after every release or software update will also help you keep your tests compatible with new changes introduced in the software application.
Along with this, it is also important to remove test cases which are no longer compatible with the application. This will reduce the cost of managing outdated and unnecessary test case and simplify future test executions.
5. Separate Test Architecture
Lastly, separate your test architecture and libraries from your test automation tool. This will help you manage and document test cases clearly and easily with minimum efforts. Separating test architecture from the tool will also ensure their reusability across different projects, tools, and environments.

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