Top Challenges in Test Automation

Challenges faced during Website Test Automation

Which tool to go for? – Website Test Automation is highly tool dependent. There are plenty options available to choose from the market. It is relevant to evaluate and find a tool that fits your budget and business needs.
How much to automate? – You cannot automate everything! So you need to plan thoroughly regarding which process to automate and upto what level? This needs to be coordinated with DevOps.
Parallel Execution – of multiple test cases is usually not viable. Even when viable, then bug logging and debugging becomes a strenuous task.
False Positives and False Negatives(Flakiness)- A false positive is a scenario where the system is fundamentally working fine but the automation scripts shows otherwise. This could cost a tester a huge amount of his time and money for finding something which doesn’t even exist. Vice-versa, a false negative is a scenario where the automation script declares the system to be working fine when in reality, it isn’t! This happens if the initial stage of a database is inaccurate or if test environment settings are abrupt due to network issues.
Web elements with undefined ID’s – Web Developers often miss out on providing an ID to every web element. If ID’s aren’t declared properly to web elements then it takes time for automated script to find these web elements. If they are not found under a significant amount of time then it leads to a failure. So, ID allocations are must for better script synchronization. Although a no-brainer but still needs mentioning, there shall be no duplicating IDs on DOM.
Quality manual test cases are the fuel for a quality automation testing – Out of the box thinking is required from a tester who is writing these scripts. You need to think from the perspective of every end user that will be utilizing your product. Make use of appropriate validation checks at the right places!
Staff selection – You need technically sound resources with thorough understanding of the business process. Vast understanding of the respective development language is a prerequisite for every resource working on automation testing.
Maintenance – Automation does allow reusability of test scripts but considering the lightning changes that are consistent with Agile methodology. Maintaining the test tools along with test scripts can be very exhausting.
Cross browser compatibility– If you are having a compound website then there will always remain some test cases which won’t get proper rendering in all web browsers. A manual approach is best suited for cross browser testing to realize which Browser/Version/OS/Device your website is unable to deliver its intended functionality.
Dynamic GUI content – As it is ever changing in accordance to the demands of time and business. Frequent changes may lead some scripts to fail.
Anxiety! – Although, automation is believed to be time effective but that also depends upon the number of test cases. In humongous website, it can even take a day or more for an automation test script to declare whether everything is working as intended!