Being in the QA industry, I have often come across one common question – how to speed up your testing processes for software projects without causing any delays?
It is evident that QA teams are in constant search for reducing their time spent on creating tests and allocate more time to run tests and consider other tasks that can add value such as exploratory testing. Reusability of test cases can save time spent on repeating tasks such as test creation and execution in the software testing processes. It can help QA testers in achieving test stability by utilizing work that they have already done in the past.
In the current situation, where the world is evolving with digital technologies, enterprises are in constant need to build software applications effectively, with increased productivity and minimize repetitive tasks. Let’s see how a team can build reusability in software testing to help reduce the costs incurred. There are various levels of testing where test management tools can help in the reusability of test cases.
Test Cases
Testers can pick generic test cases while designing them for some common areas of an application, that can be reused at various stages. These areas may include:
Test Attributes
User Interface, Performance, Security, Accessibility, etc.
Domain-Specific Compliances
Healthcare, Education, BFSI, etc.
Technology
Mobile, Web Applications, etc.
Test management tools are designed to help build reusable test cases for testers to utilize and save their time on the same tests repeatedly.
Test Automation Frameworks
Testers can build modular frameworks that can be easily reused. Although test automation is expensive, it has a higher ROI. there are different views on this aspect as the changing product functionality may not work for each test scenario.
Although this challenge is mostly beyond the scope of the testing team to control, the situation gets complicated when they fail to achieve good test automation code. This includes the test cases that do not add a lot of value when they are automated, huge chunks of repetitive code are written, so it gets complicated to read through. So a test management tool like Kualitee can help in modularizing test automation code and use frameworks to handle repetitive functionality.
Test Data
There is a huge scope for testers to build reusability and they spend a lot of time during the testing cycle. They should spend more time deciding what kind of reusable data can be created. For instance, user accounts, user profile information, etc.
Test Infrastructure
There are many external methods that can leverage machines on the cloud, VPN, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Additionally, if the test setup is such that testers need to maintain it in-house, explore options such as cheating images, downloaded copies of the software, etc.
Conclusion
When a testing team or QA manager plans effectively in advance and invests in building the right levels of reusability in software testing, they may already create more ways for testers to spend their time on creative and challenging areas of quality assurance. The right blend of automated testing tasks, and reusability of test cases, and scenarios can go hand in hand to build a product of great quality and meet delivery deadlines. However, it is important for a team to be able to reuse data, process, information, etc. and this is where a test management tool plays a vital role. So, we cannot deny its importance in saving time and effort.
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