Test Automation Is A Culture: Let Your Team Embrace It

The quality of any application or product you deliver is key to keep your reputation intact. The Quality Assurance process that you follow would be central to this. As new technologies and features make their way into the application architecture, major changes are required at every level of the application stack. If you are a company that is focusing on the quality you deliver, you will want to keep your testing practices up-to-date. This requires a culture change that needs to evolve to move forward.

Even today, many companies live in the world of manual testing. It takes a culture change to enter the world of test automation. It is not as easy as it looks. It takes a robust QA practice and a change of culture to be able to sustain a transformation to automated testing. Below, I take a look at the seven cultural changes you can pursue to enable your QA team to embrace automated testing.

1. Clean the Mess in The House

Initially, the test cases should be precise and concise. The detail should be covered so that every single step is crystal clear to the reader. Good manual test cases are blueprints for what you will and will not be able to automate. Make the team understand the importance of having well-written test cases. As test cases lay the foundation stone to the unveiling world of test automation. Aim for goodness, not perfection. Pick a tool to store and organize your manual test case.

2. Start Small and Aim Big

Narrow down the most critical test cases and create a build verification test pack. This can then evolve and change as you dig deeper and learn more.

3. Weigh out The Best Fits

Decide on the simplest way to implement your framework approach using your actual product.

If you are using Selenium, you have some great options: Java, Robot, Python, Ruby, Cucumber (and many more). These can be hosted or self-managed. Tools like TestProject can help you easily enter the world of test automation.

4. Have a Believing Team

Make your team believe in automating their tests. Let them see the benefits that it could bring to them and the way they work. Have the ritual of creating proof of concepts to make your team believe in why it is beneficial. Every transformation to the automated testing story begins with the realization that the current setup isn’t working.

Automation is key to achieving speed across the pipeline. The commitment is necessary for it to work. Make them believe automation reduces manual errors, and bakes quality into every step of the process.

5. Assign Good Shepherds to Lead the Way

Assign leads or senior engineers who can lead the QA team in believing and working towards test automation. Let them guide the team, sketch out a meticulous game plan to incorporate the change, and make sure this is followed as a ritual.

6. Continuous Learning and Scrutiny

Continuous learning is key to keep improving your test automation practice and culture. Scrutinize from what is new out in the industry and learn and adhere to the approach that helps your team to grow.

7. Practice What You Preach

Building quality into your SDLC (software development life cycle) requires a commitment to automation. You know you’re on the right track when automation is something you do not just to reduce effort, but to also move faster, and build quality. As you embrace a culture of automation, it’s bound to transform your testing efforts and result in high-quality apps that are shipped faster. Therefore walk the talk! 

Further Reading 

What is DevOps? An Intersection of Culture, Processes, and Tools