Many articles and books are available at the present moment. They are about the way how to raise the automation process from the beginning, what and how to automate, and what tool it is better to choose.

I will share with you my experience in auto-testing. The project specificity plays an important role, but I would like to find something in common for all. Also, I want to talk about the way that you really need to follow in order to get a good result.

In this article, you can find the description of the software life-cycle, principles and requirements that are useful to observe in any automation process, the examples and advices in making important decisions in the process planning.

Written by:

Elena Futornyak,
Tester of Driver Testing Team

Contents

Introduction.

1 Environment for the auto – tests performing

2 The life-cycle of auto-tests

3 The main principles of the projecting

4 The requirements for auto-tests

Conclusion

Sources

Introduction

It is perfect, when managers formulate the detailed plan for the automation process and at first define the tool and its features and then hire the specialist, who knows how to use  this tool. In reality, the situations can be very different and all these steps can be performed in another order. So, it is good if a person has higher technical education, is interested in programming and already has the good experience in software development, and also has some experience in the administration.

1. Environment for the auto – tests performing

Before you use some tool, make sure that it conforms to your expectations and performs all necessary functions, for example, that it identifies the necessary GUI elements.

The tools for the automation can have the client-server architecture (for example, TestComplete, Microsoft Test Manager). In this case, ready script will be executed only by the installed client. You should take this fact into consideration before you implement such tool, because it is necessary to install clients on every PC, where the scripts execute.

Other tools can compile the executable files (for example, AutoIT). This fact simplifies using of such scripts. But the distributed system, which can run scripts on the defined PC, controls the execution process and captures the final information about the task and system status, is absent in this case. So, we have to organize such scripts manually.

Also, it is necessary to consider  the risks, which can appear as a result of not thorough knowledge of the tool. For example, it is inconvenient to test the program installation that needs a reboot in Microsoft Test Manager, because it is not provided that the system reboots during the test execution. In this case, it is convenient to use AutoIT.

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