What are the topmost challenges for QA automation?

 

Following are a few key challenges found in the QA automation process:

1. Data related issues: There can be scenarios wherein testing teams can test against wrong data, as there can be situations wherein the right data would be a bit difficult to obtain. Data accuracy and data relevancy are the two key criteria for automated testing to provide good results. Communication gaps and complicated processes also prevent the teams from obtaining the most relevant and updated data.

 

2. Code smell needs to be fixed: Any specific characteristic in the code that might impact the design code negatively is considered to be a code smell. It is not only important for the programmers to maintain code quality, but also, for the testers.

 

When a code smell is fixed by the QA team, the following aspects can be achieved:

l  Test results are executed faster in minimal execution time

l  The automation test suite is made more robust

l  The effort and maintenance cost is reduced significantly.

Code smell cannot be found by manual testing in totality. Hence, all the bad smells that are present in the source code can be identified by automated code review tools.

 

3. Challenges related to test scripts: If a few or many of the QA team members do not have the required coding related skill sets then issues related to test scripts can crop up. In these scenarios, reusability (reusing test scripts) can be leveraged by these teams so that problems can be solved and code can be maintained accordingly.

Test code can be treated as production code and thus code can be maintained in a better manner. Apart from this, the code should be periodically tested along with scheduling debugging sessions and also seeing that key issues are identified with object identifiers.

 

4. Network disconnections: Through network disconnections, it becomes quite difficult for QA teams to access specific testing environments, APIs, third-party services, VPN, databases etc., due to unstable network connections. Unnecessary delays are caused by these network disconnections, which, in turn, obstruct the testing process.