Test Automation Tools – A Guide to Selecting the Right One for Your Needs

Test automation has evolved significantly in recent years, with a wealth of tools emerging to streamline this essential process.

All of this choice means that picking the right tool can be a challenge of its own. To that end, here are some points to consider as you attempt to narrow down your selection of solutions.

Assess the Advantages of the Cloud

As you might expect, the cloud has altered the way that automated web testing is provided to clients. Rather than requiring platforms to run in-house, vendors can empower users by hosting testing infrastructures remotely.

Hybrid cloud products even exist in this space, giving you a combination of on-site and remote resources to rely on.

You can of course create tests yourself in this context, but being able to leverage cloud datacenters to do the hard work has a whole host of benefits. This includes freeing you of the need to worry about the costs of procuring and maintaining the hardware, as well as the innate scalability that all cloud services afford.

Collaboration is also simpler to achieve when testing in the cloud. Developers and team members from different departments can work together using a single interface, which helps to catalyze key aspects of testing and ensure everyone is on the same page.

Analyze Reporting Abilities

Following on from the discussion of the multidisciplinary nature of testing, it is definitely worth looking into the reporting features that are offered by the automation tools on your watch list.

A deluge of data is generated through testing, and making this interpretable and shareable is necessary. Conveying information in a clear, unambiguous way will allow you to explain issues identified and specify the next steps for all involved parties.

Look at How Tests Are Put Together

Test automation should be able to make running checks throughout the development process less of a strain. However, tools can offer different levels of accessibility depending on the types of users that are being targeted.

For example, there are solutions that require a higher level of technical understanding, including a familiarity with coding in the relevant programming languages. This may be desirable, or it could be a sticking point.

Conversely there are some platforms that are codeless in their design, meaning that even those without programming knowledge will be able to construct tests from scratch. There are limitations that come with this, of course, but again it is down to you to look at your needs and match them to a testing tool.

Consider Integration Options

Software testing is not something that happens in a vacuum, and it is safe to assume that you will be reliant on a suite of different tools in order to bring a project to a satisfactory conclusion.

The best testing platform will therefore be one which offers direct integrations, or at least some level of compatibility, with the other weapons in your arsenal.

Drilling down into this interoperability could be the quickest way to remove some potential testing tools from your shortlist, even if they are otherwise promising.

Read Testimonials and Feedback

Last of all, you can get a better sense of the quality of test automation tools if you look at the kinds of companies and brands which have used them in the past, as well as the feedback that existing customers and clients have provided.

It is easy to get caught up in the marketing hype, but at the end of the day unless users are actually satisfied with a solution, then this is all just so much hot air.