How many times have you been asked to deliver software faster? If you’ve worked as a part of a software development team or a freelance developer, chances are high that you’ve faced pressure to complete projects many times. In addition to the time requirements, developers and testers also need to maintain the quality of the software.

Clearly, this is something that nobody wants to face in their work. Thankfully, automation test platforms have gotten very good, plus many new techniques have emerged to help developers to speed up software testing without compromising quality. Those using these practices and tools are typically more effective and efficient when it comes to achieving both good speed and quality.

For example, by using a well-thought-out automation strategy as well as improving existing testing practices, developers can reduce the time required for testing and streamline this process. In this article, I’m going to provide you with tips and techniques to ensure that your success is long-term and avoid recurring mistakes.

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1. Don’t Automate Everything in Software Testing

Automation is without a doubt an essential part of any software delivery pipeline, especially in companies that consider themselves agile. Automating the entire software testing processes might seem like a no-brainer in many cases since it reduces release cycles. In fact, this idea is very enticing, as it has the potential to reduce the amount of manual work that developers have to do.

While I agree that complete automation is effective for fast software delivery, it’s not an answer for both effective and fast software delivery. There are three main reasons for this.

The first is that you need to invest in and employ effective automation software to complete the process properly. Next, you need qualified testers to ensure that everything goes smoothly. Lastly, there are significant time and effort requirements when it comes to developing tests and building the automation infrastructure. For example, each automated tests needs to be developed, coded, and verified before anyone can use it for its main purpose.

In other words, to automate the process of software delivery, you need to do a great deal of additional software development.

Recently, I’ve come across this excellent publication from Oracle called When to Automate Your Testing (and When Not To) where authors Joe Fernandes and Alex Di Fonzo did an awesome job at describing the realities and myths of automated testing. Here are some of the best takeaways from the publication that support this tip:

• To implement automated software testing, you need a team of properly trained and skilled testers
• EVERY company that prefers automated still has to use manual testing as a part of software delivery pipeline
• Around 75 percent of all functional testing is still manual
• Certain software is overly complex or even not suitable for automated testing
• Many testers lack the skills required to manage software for automated testing.

So, automated testing is not always a good idea to deliver a digital product quickly and effectively. If you decide to automate everything, chances are that the time to complete that project may actually increase or you’ll end up not doing a thorough job.

Here are the instances where manual testing is the best idea, according to the abovementioned Oracle report:

• New and evolving functionality. In case if the process of developing or improving the features of a digital product under development, automating the tests may not reveal all problems
• Apps where human validation is needed. It happens quite often that humans are the best validators for certain functions of digital products (for example, a human is definitely better at judging usability)
• Overly complex functionality. If some of the features of digital products are overly complex, then automating them would be a big challenge in terms of time and cost investments
• Strategic development. It’s definitely better to test everything manually if the application of another digital product has special importance for the organization.

2. Automated Testing is a Must for These Five Processes

So if automated testing is not a good idea in many cases, are there are instances where it’s the best way to go? According to the Oracle report, there are at least five cases where you should definitely go for automation instead of manual work to achieve the fastest and the most effective delivery of software:

• Regression testing. Even though some of these tests could be carried out manually using the classic “click-and-inspect” technique (let’s face it, expectations of customers and developers could be vastly different, so applying manual testing could be a better idea), re-testing existing features that you decided to carry forward to later versions can certainly be tested automatically
• Smoke testing. In many cases, the decision whether to proceed with deeper testing procedures is urgent, so automating a quick high-level evaluation using automated systems would be a reasonable decision
• Repetitive and static testing. This is a no-brainer: if a testing task stays relatively similar from one test cycle to the next, do it with via automatic means, and you’ll save tons of time
• Data-driven testing. This category includes the tests involving the same features need to be approved, even with different data sets
• Load and performance testing. Here, there’s simply no alternative to automatic testing.

Oh, and one more thing: don’t try to automate from day one. At the beginning of every software project, its design, as well as requirements, is not stable, so doing so very early may result in preventable work (for example, many UI features can change at any time).

3. Involve Everyone

A development team is the most valuable asset when it comes to speeding up software delivery. To be able to do their work well, every tester needs to understand the purpose of the project as well as their responsibilities. Otherwise, they wouldn’t even be able to explain their role on the project to others, which is a strong indicator of a dysfunctional team.

There are several important reasons why every tester should be encouraged to share their opinions and ideas:

• Testers typically have a unique understanding of software products. By looking at software from a whole different perspective, testers can bring unique insights and influence products during the entire development process. As a result, they can provide a lot of value; for example, they can come up with solutions for faster implementation
• An opportunity to spot more problems. Even though the testing team doesn’t have to write the code, they can be instrumental at identifying inefficiencies and variables that can potentially lead to even bigger problems if they cooperate with the development team (paired testing). As a result, testers can bring a unique perspective by looking at the product from a different perspective, suggest improvements, ask questions and help developers come up with new ideas, and do many other things that can prevent delays in the testing process.
• An opportunity to prevent problems based on previous experiences. An experienced tester is typically a person who has developed the sense that helps them to predict when something may go wrong with the product they’re testing. Moreover, experienced ones are also good at spotting issues within their teams, and this sense is the result of a deep understanding of their field as well as a vast experience in working on similar projects as well as diverse teams.

That’s why a leader of a software testing team should be effective at involving everyone to participate, share their ideas and concerns, and thus contribute to a more effective process. This also means that team members should also be good communicators to be able to collaborate and share ideas.

In fact, The State of Testing 2018 report found that communication was the most important skill required to be a good tester. Accordingly, 75 percent of the respondents – 1,500 professional testers – agreed that the skill was important to them.

Credit: The State of Testing 2018 report

The fact that testers realise the importance of communication themselves supports the idea that the skill is critical to the success of their projects and therefore, their career.

That’s why software development companies are investing in writing skills of their employees by using professional writing and consulting services like Trust My Paper and Studicus. This is especially relevant for testing teams who have remote workers and have to communicate as well write reports on a regular basis, therefore, need their writing to be bold and clear.

4. Invest in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Testing Solutions

While it’s pretty easy to imagine intelligent robots taking over humanity when you think about artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), the reality is pretty much different. The two technologies are directly applicable to a wide variety of aspects of software testing, including:

• Finding and resolving test failures
• Performing expiratory testing
• Functional regression testing
• Performance testing.

That’s why a lot of testers, especially younger ones, consider AI and ML important skills to learn to improve the speed as well as the quality of software testing. In fact, the above mentioned State of Testing report found that the two technologies will be among those testers “should be investing their time, money, and knowledge in.”

Credit: The State of Testing 2018 report

Here are some of the ways in which AI and ML can disrupt the software testing field:

• Further automation. As the number of tests increases, it becomes harder to support everything. On top of that, changes in a product also lead to a lot of updates; as a result, automation can easily turn into maintenance. An AI-powered bot can learn new features of the product and identify whether it’s a defect or a legit change. As a result, this eliminates the need for constant refinement of the code, which is a typical requirement if the code was written manually.
• Increasing the speed of manual testing. AI can be an effective tool for facilitating manual testing by helping to write code and analyzing vast amounts of data sets. For example, the technology can improve the accuracy in the program as well as help to reduce time investment by handling sorting through log files.
• Bug elimination. Even the most thorough quality assurance processes may miss some bugs, which requires more time and effort investment. When a tester discovers them, he or she must work on the analysis of the causal relationships of the issue. In this situation, AI can help the tester in several ways; for example, it can assist with discovering how, where, and when the issues have occurred.
• Testing of user experience (UI) interfaces. One of the technologies powered by machine learning – image recognition – is developing at the speed of light, and it can be a useful tool for UI testers; for example, it can recognize shapes and break down user interfaces to the pixel level, thus assisting with determining the most user-friendly options.
• More effective bug identification. ML-powered solution designed to look for specific bugs can be a more effective tool for more reliable results. Besides, the time used to discover bugs may also be reduced significantly.

5. Improve Planning Process

Victory loves preparation. To be able to maximise the effectiveness and efficiency of your software testing processes, you need to invest in good planning, definition, and documentation. This means developing quality management and test plans for every project.

For example, a quality management plan typically involves defining quality goals, standards, control and assurance activities, roles and responsibilities, and a strategy for reporting quality issues. Next, the list of the most important sections in a test plan includes test goals, communication, reporting, budget, deadlines, execution schedule, testing measurements, and risk identification strategies.

Putting it all Together

Faster software testing is the ultimate goal of these techniques. As you can see, by investing in your testing team and improving the processes that you already have, you can accelerate your testing processes without sacrificing the quality. By adopting at least some of the above tips, you should make a great start of testing process optimization and faster delivery of your products.