Web Testing Challenges Testers Will Encounter in 2019

With the introduction of the agile methodology and transformation into the digital world, the software development lifecycle is changing rapidly and increasing the need for better software testing capabilities. And software testing is being forced to be reinvented every day due to the introduction of new technologies like artificial intelligence, virtualization, and predictive analysis. This disruption in development flow and high demand for testing raises many challenges for software testers who test a website or web application. In 2019, we are expecting a lot of new changes in the web and this further poses a challenge in the testing cycle.

Let’s have a look on major challenges that testers might face in testing in 2019.

Adoption of Agile and DevOps

Agile testing and DevOps have become the key drivers for progress in the software testing market. As per a market research analyst, the global Software market will grow at a rate of CAGR of approx 14% till 2021. It is very important for software testers to adopt the agile testing methodology and DevOps skills in their testing life cycle to ensure performance, speed, and flexibility in the software development process. Current tech era needs to sustain high quality and faster application deployments.

Every day new browser versions and mobile devices are being launched and operating systems are upgrading regularly, so you need to upgrade your website or web applications for seamless user experience on those devices and operating systems. To ensure running a risk-free business, the stability of your product is very important. Testers will need to break the shell and develop the required skills of DevOps and Agile methodology.

Learn to Code and Collaborate With Developers

With the adoption of Agile and DevOps, testers need to collaborate with developers in every manner for faster and bug-free build deployment. This might result in testers helping in development and developers helping in writing test cases. So testers will need to learn development skills as well to have good collaboration with the development team. By following Agile methodology, teams are divided into small bunches for sprints where developers and testers cooperate to deliver high quality faster deployments.

Adopt Automation Testing Over Manual Testing

With the increase in complexity of a web application or software product, it becomes impossible to test all the testing combinations manually. So a tester will also need to adopt automation testing instead of manual only. With test automation, you can achieve goals for testing every test cases efficiently and with faster velocity. Testers need to update automation scripts for any changes or upgrades done in the software or web application. However, by automating it is not meant to automate everything. Since not every test case can be automated, we have to find out what can be automated and what shouldn’t. In case, one finds out the test cases to be automated, the next step comes to the selection of automation tool. Adoption of open source automation tool such as Selenium is very much helpful to bring quality and speed in the software development process.

While using Selenium for automation testing, software testers may face the following challenges:

1. Dynamic Content

A web page can have dynamic content which is user specific. Different users experience different content on a page after some time or content reflect on hovering the cursor to a particular position. Sometimes it will be difficult for locators to identify web element to add in automation test cases.

2. Not Able to Test Mobile Apps

Selenium is limited to web automation only. Selenium does not provide the capability to automate native mobile applications running on operating systems like iOS and Android. However, there is a way around for this. Testers can use a tool like Appium to automate tests for mobile applications.

3. Multi-tab Testing

You can switch to a new tab while testing with Selenium automation script if you know correct commands. Testers will need to learn all those commands to execute Selenium automation efficiently.

4. Limited Reporting

As Selenium is an open source tool, it is limited to its feature and does not support detailed reporting. Sometimes testers need data report for future reference and Selenium is not helpful in this. However, integrating Selenium with test reporting can help.

5. Scalability

Selenium is limited to run a number of the test sessions at a time, and how fast it can run tests on different browsers and operating systems is dependent upon how many nodes you have in your Selenium Grid. You need to scale your testing as your software scales.

Wide Test Coverage and Rapid Upgrades of Browsers and Devices

There are many web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, Edge, etc. with multiple browser versions, a different type of mobile devices with various screen resolutions and viewports, and many operating systems to test on. If I calculate the combinations, it will result in more than 2000 browser-OS combinations with various screen resolutions. Testers need to test all the features and functionalities of the application on all the combinations to ensure the seamless experience as per the user’s expectations. With a wide range of browser and devices, testers should take care of cross-browser testing, performance testing, geolocation testing, responsive testing, etc.

Integration, Security, and Performance

Integration testing can cause many issues like performance, infrastructure inconsistency, and different interaction model before build deployment. Integration testing also causes a problem when an application interacts with other applications.

Testers may face various challenges while performing security testing of a website, which includes cleaning malicious files if your website has been breached or contains unsecured communications and the integration of different secure authentication procedures. Testers involved in data security should check data integrity after and before the attack.

While conducting performance testing, testers may need to test a very large and complex application using limited hardware and face issues like the interpretation of software requirements and thousands of tiny application features. Nobody wants to access a slow app, so testers need to test the application thoroughly for performance. Performance testing should be done from time to time because integration and interoperability can also affect performance.

Advance Detection of Defects

Fixing errors and bugs on a later testing cycle and on a production build is very expensive and complex. This may cause instability of the product and ultimately loss of customers. It is a good practice to find the bug in the early stage of product requirement and early software development life cycle. Also, regular code reviewing process can help with quality assurance. Following these practices will affect less on future programming and coding cycle.

Poor API Testing

Nowadays, most of the software development processes are following service-oriented architecture (SOA) with the implementation of public APIs, which can be further used by developers to enlarge the solution. Testers are ignoring API testing as it requires a high level of coding skills and it is very complex. APIs are gaining popularity among developers and it involves a high level of risk. Hence, it is very important to add API testing in the software testing lifecycle to ensure bug-free APIs.

In summary, these are the common challenges that software testers face while performing web testing. If you have faced any general challenge while performing testing, please feel free to share in the comments below.

Happy testing!