As an agile test automation expert with over 15 years of journeying alongside software teams across various industries, I have been privileged to directly enable countless organizations to achieve newer heights of speed, quality and business returns through carefully crafted automation strategies.
Today, I‘m excited to guide you on a similar path to excellence leveraging test automation, so your team can fully reap the customer-delighting benefits of agile delivery. Time is the most precious commodity – the insights shared ahead (from both my own experiences and proven research) will properly establish understanding of aligning automation with agility to maximize outcomes.
First, it‘s important to level-set the imperative context driving this automation focus…
The Soaring Popularity of Agile Makes Automation Table Stakes
The data says it all – agile software development adoption has sharply risen globally year-over-year as teams seek more flexibility responding to dynamic business landscapes.Per the State of Agile Report by Digital.ai, 98% of surveyed organizations practice agile development in some form as of today – a tremendous increase versus 71% in 2015.
Additionally, the successes from early agile pioneers have driven this viral growth. For example, Spotify highlighted how incorporating agile with complementary lean and iterative approaches led to >125% product delivery efficiency gains and much faster customer feedback.
Many others innovators from ING Bank to Samsung have realized benefits like:
- 75% faster time-to-market releases
- 60%+ boost in product quality
- 5x more features delivered per release
Clearly, agile principles enable tremendous speed and adaptability advantages. However, scaling delivery velocity 10x without compromises is impossible relying solely on manual testing practices once code is "finished". This absolutely requires smart automation leverage!
Laying the Automation Groundwork for Agile Excellence
So how can teams thoughtfully adopt test automation to best support rapid agile release cycles? Let‘s explore some key focus areas:
1. Architect Enabling CI/CD Pipelines
Automation requires specific continuous integration and deployment(CI/CD) foundations for seamless executions invoking the right scripts and tests at each application change. This demands initial upfront effort to design delivery pipelines integrating preferred source control, build servers, test runners etc.
2. Justify Automation ROI for Repetitive Cases
I advise clients focus automation only on frequent tedious tests unfeasible manually long-term e.g. smoke suites, cross-browser regressions etc. Unique exploratory testing is still essential at each stage for insight. Calculate ~3 runs as baseline ROI target.
3. Analyze Alternate Open Source Automation Frameworks
Every test automation archetype from UI to API has multiple open-source options like Selenium, Playwright, RestAssured etc. Deeply evaluate each based on application tech stack fit, resilience, community support and ease of use.
4. Institutionalize Automation Ops & Culture
Enable automation success and longevity via dedicated talent acquisition, focused training programs and defined ops procedures for triaging failures, script versioning and maintenance. Make this strategic priority across leadership.
5. Verify Real-World App Performance
While core logic flows matter, valid automation outcome is confirming stellar true user experience. Leverage extensive real device clouds allowing CI executed test automation to catch subtle issues arising from real-world hardware, software and network conditions.
Recommendations to Avoid Common Test Automation Pitfalls
Through guiding Fortune 500 customers in scaling their agile test automation initiatives, I have observed some frequent areas teams stumble if not preemptively mitigated:
Flaky Tests
Brittle scripts often break unpredictably lowering trust in automation value. Prioritize upfront investment in resilient code, failure analysis and self-healing capabilities. As prevention patients, target root cause areas like test environment volatility, 3rd party service availability, object locators, test data etc.
Unmaintainable Test Debt
Legacy automation suites with years of patching struggle enhancing quickly. Fail build validation rates signal need for overhaul. Start fresh adopting modern frameworks following coding best practices and appropriately abstracting cores libraries for easier upkeep.
Talent Scarcity
Scripting automation requires specialized coding skillsets. Build an internal automation CoE of excellence focused on arming more team members with this capability through training programs, mentoring and tools for those newer to programming.
Real World Defect Leakage
Emulators and simulators are limited in reproducing the diverse conditions of actual user devices and platforms. This results in escape defects diluting production quality. Ensure real mobile phones, tablets, browsers etc. are available for automated verifications.
Staying vigilant on these areas will pay automation excellence dividends over the long term.
I hope this guide offers you clarity plus conviction on adopting test automation to unlock true agile delivery speed and confidence. As next steps, I recommend first defining an agile testing charter and assessing current process gaps to create an executable roadmap. Feel free to schedule a consultation with me to discuss further details.
Here‘s to leapfrogging quality innovation together!
