In the current fast-paced digital environment, organizations deliver increasingly complicated software solutions. They have multiple interconnected modules responsible for different business processes, third-party services or databases that must be regularly updated. Failures in their cohesive work can result in major problems — From slow loading speed and freezing to complete system outages and data breaches.
Any of these will negatively impact end user satisfaction, customer retention rates and profits. Financial losses caused by system outages in the US often reach 100 thousand dollars, as reported by the Uptime Institute. Just remember the case of a large social network that lost more than $60 million in advertising revenue after a six-hour break.
To prevent such unpleasant consequences, companies can use end-to-end test automation. But what is it? What advantages does it provide? How can it be established on the project? Let’s dive into it a little more.
Defining the concept and its business advantages
End-to-end test automation is the process of performing automated tests aimed at verifying each software component and its multiple interactions. This is done to ensure that the IT products work according to the requirements and do not contain problems. The software flow is scrutinized from start to finish. Therefore, using a manual approach for this work is a bad idea, as it can take too much time and still cause human errors.
Respondents from World Quality Report 2023-24. (WQR) stated that they expect an automated QA workflow to deliver improved CX (50%), fewer live issues (51%) and risk minimization (54%). Along with this value, I also believe that by using end-to-end test automation, QA teams can test software more efficiently and realize the following benefits:
- Maximum test coverage: A comprehensive testing approach helps cover the entire software workflow and run dozens of extensive test cases in parallel, which speeds up execution time and enables 24-hour testing.
- Minimized risk of human errors: Even seasoned experts with years of experience can make mistakes when manually performing monotonous, voluminous checks. Due to the automated nature of testing, the overall accuracy of the QA process increases, which contributes to obtaining robust and reliable results.
- Constant and fast feedback: The ability to automatically run tests 24 hours a day provides QA teams with constant feedback on software quality and areas that need fixing. This is also a huge benefit for developers, as they can correct problems early in the SDLC when mitigating them is not as difficult and expensive.
- Save financial and time resources: Manually running large regression packages consisting of thousands of cases means longer test cycles, more team stress, missed deadlines and lost revenue. Test automation can save hundreds of hours of manual work by QA engineers and solve various problems more efficiently, thereby reducing operational costs.
- Improved software quality: When automated tests are run regularly, end users get a more stable and reliable application that is secure, high-performing and runs like clockwork thanks to proactive remediation of any defects.
7 Basic Steps to Start End-to-End Test Automation
Although end-to-end test automation helps significantly speed up testing processes and improve software quality, organizations still struggle with its adoption. According to WQR, several problems can prevent its adoption, for example, working with legacy systems (34% of respondents), lack of professional knowledge (30%), lack of necessary tools (18%) or strategy (15%) and many more.
Therefore, I suggest you consider these steps to effectively implement end-to-end test automation on a project:
Determine the scope of automation
From my experience, I can say that 100% test coverage can rarely be achieved, especially when deadlines are tight. Therefore, I recommend that you focus on high-priority, business-critical application functions first. For example, if we talk about an E-commerce appliesion, I would define registration, search functions, product description, orders, card work, payments and shipping as the main workflows that should be carefully studied from the beginning. Then, it is possible to focus on other software areas. Such a deep understanding of user requirements helps ensure coherent and secure operation of software solutions.
Select the appropriate tools
Today, companies can choose from a wide variety of free or paid tools and frameworks — from Cypress to Catalonia. To choose them, it is important to consider unique specificities of the project, such as (but not limited to) duration, QA budget, platform or browser type, integrations with CI systems or test tracking solutions, need to run parallel tests, team composition and expertise. Also, it might be a good idea to take advantage of AI-based tools as they can further simplify quality assurance processes. For example, AI can be used to analyze the reasons for test failure, thereby simplifying decision-making later.
Create reliable automated scripts
To verify the entire application flow, QA automation engineers must implement robust test case-based automated scripts that follow real-life user scenarios. It is vital to ensure that the scripts are maintainable and easily understood by every team member.
It is also important to pay special attention to the tests that check the UI to prevent scaling, i.e. tests that either fail or fail when run under the same conditions and without any code changes. This can happen due to the complicated nature of the tests or some external conditions, such as network problems. To avoid unstable tests, QA automation engineers should constantly monitor test results, use appropriate test data, and ensure that the test environment is stable.
Don’t forget about parallel testing
Speed up software testing activities and getting valuable feedback faster, it is a good practice to run several automated scripts at the same time on different equipment or environments. In doing so, companies can use cloud infrastructure, such as virtual machines, or use on-premise ones, depending on the client’s technical ecosystem. In addition, in the case of the first option, QA automation engineers can scale up the cloud infrastructure to support important releases, which allows multiple tests to be performed at the same time and avoids long-term investments in on-premises infrastructure.
Prioritize tracking
By continuously analyzing test results, QA engineers can ensure that defects are fixed in a timely manner and that production problems do not occur, as well as increase overall efficiency by locating potential problem areas in the testing process.
Ensure the continuity of the testing process
By seamlessly incorporating QA automation into CI/CD pipelines, project teams can test each line of code faster before deployment. This is to make sure that the software is safe, reliable and works exactly as it should according to the requirements.
Don’t opt out of testing support
Constantly revising and renewing current test suites and scripts is a key activity that helps QA engineers ensure that all new changes to the application are covered by the various checks. It also allows deleting repetitive or unimportant tests.
Conclusion
End-to-end test automation helps companies deliver secure software functionality and performance, reduce operational costs, ensure accelerated time to market, and achieve business goals.
To effectively deploy this approach, project teams can wisely choose automation scope and appropriate tools, create stable tests, set up parallel testing, regularly monitor results, and establish integration with the CI/CD pipeline.