A guide on how to select right Automation Tool

"Quality at Speed" is the new tagline for companies and demand from customers. It means higher quality products must reach end-users but during a shorter period than before. This is a crucial piece of the puzzle for accelerating customers' time to market. This challenging requirement was exploited by QAs all across the world as fuel for test automation's spectacular growth. The result's automation has proven a game-changer by allowing QA teams to conduct faster and more accurate test cases.

Regression testing or tests that repeat themselves every sprint are the simplest candidates that needed to be automated the most. Frequent code updates will considerably increase the overall cost in terms of time and labor resources required to manually run the tests. Therefore, writing automated tests is the more sensible and effective course of action in such circumstances.

After stating everything above, the question of which tool is best for your website remains a challenge. The automation testing tool must be according to many different factors, like project scope and requirements, in addition to its reputation. The best testing outcome does not always arise from the simplest tool available. It must be the proper one. During this blog, I will try to provide my views to help you choose between a plethora of automation tools available in the market.

Should I select the “right” automation testing tool or the “best” one?

Test automation doesn't work the identical way for all software projects. Even though many QA teams have benefited from automation, the majority of businesses have spent time, money, and resources by using automation solutions and then abandoning the project.

Types of Automation Tools:

Open Source Automation tools: These are free tools that allow users to make their code as well as use the freely available code written by other users. Users can fully adopt the code or change it to satisfy their needs. These are most in demand thanks to their no-cost and customizing abilities.

Commercial Automation tools: These are meant for commercial reasons and hence sold via subscriptions and licensing. they are doing have more advanced features and support systems as compared to free tools. Cost remains a serious factor here.

Customized tools: Even if the value and free availability are out of the question, sometimes it's better to develop everything from scratch. This requires strong hands-on technical experts which itself becomes a huge challenge for the companies.

Therefore, your first step is to determine whether any of the three groups mentioned above may satisfy your demands. you'll deep dive then into other requirements.

Define your needs and testing demands

Always remember that test automation isn't required for all projects. Therefore, determine your testing requirements first and then confirm that your websites do require automation. Ask yourself the next questions. The more Yes votes you receive, the closer you will be to supporting automation.

• Do you need to do a lot of repetitive test cases?
• Do you have frequent regression testing cycles?
• Do you need to simulate a sizable number of users for performance testing?
• Do you think the UI is stable?
• Do you have any critical application features for which manual testing is insufficient?

These are a variety of the most challenging criteria for test automation tools. To correctly identify them, QA specialists need a thorough knowledge of their projects.

Criteria for choosing an automation testing tool

Alright. You require automation if you responded to the preceding questions with more Yeses than Noes. How to choose from the vast selection of instruments on the market is the next issue. Your team should use the following criteria to find the necessary automation tool.

1. Do you have technical experts who can immediately get ahold of the tools?  Because automation testing relies on tools, a great deal of coding expertise and technical understanding are needed. In most open-source automation tools QAs must have a sufficient level of programming knowledge to write and execute test scripts. They need a great understanding of programming languages e.g. knowledge of OOPS concepts. Sometimes lack of concept understanding becomes the biggest barrier in choosing testing tools. The world is moving swiftly toward codeless technologies to break the bottleneck, yet even these take some work to comprehend.

1. Do you have the necessary budget? 
   The fact is that test automation is frequently expensive. Resources, coding efforts, and tools all need time and money. It will be simpler for you to choose between a commercial or open-source product depending on your budget.

1. Which features does the tool offer?
   No matter how it is used, every tool should always offer the following features. They consist of:

• Multi-platform support;
• An applied application under tests;
• Multi-programming language support;
• CI/CD integration capabilities;
• Variety of Reporting functionality. 

1. What about code maintenance and reusability? 
   We must consider the time and expense involved in maintaining code and reusing it, just as with any other programming language. This has a direct impact on overall costs. In automation testing, pre-written scripts are frequently fragile. The optimum automation solution ought to include capabilities to minimize this work, including lowering object locator flakiness.

1. Does it offer CI/CD capabilities? 
   To guarantee testing continuity, the chosen automated testing solution must be able to link into CI/CD pipelines and other platforms. A stronger test management and team collaboration culture will result from this.

1. Which kind of support is available? The tool's support is a crucial additional factor to take into account. The support of the community is crucial for developers, especially for open-source and free products. Customers should be able to quickly get assistance from commercial tools for any technical problems.