With the increasing need for Automation testing, more and more organizations are embracing test automation. Everyone has either moved to it or are planning to adapt test automation in one way or another. To move ahead with test automation, people are facing the answer to a question a bit difficult, How to choose the best test automation tool? which test automation tool should I use? Which is the best tool for automation testing that will suit me?
Well, the market is coming up with a lot of automation tools every day but not all the tool suits your requirements. Before selecting the best tool for you, you will need to closely understand and analyze the tool. So, if you’re also facing the same dilemma in analyzing the best tool for you, then don’t worry by the end of this article, you’ll be clear in your mind about how to choose the best tool for test automation.
- Related: 10 Best Practices for Planning a test Automation Strategy
- Why You need to automate Cross browser compatibility testing
How to Select the Tool for Test Automation?
The time taken to get started
The first thing that you need to do is to set up the tool. In the fast-paced world, where everyone is in short of time it becomes necessary to understand how long does your tool needs to get started. So, as per the requirements of the test automation tool, you’ll have to do some downloading, installation, setup, scripting, etc. You might have time and patience for it, however, if you are looking to immediately start your tests, this is something you might have to evaluate.
There are tools that provide a free trial or freemium plan, and this is one of the necessary things before finalizing your tool. So, you can try setting up your tool in the freemium version and see how much time it takes for you to get started with. Once you’re satisfied with it, you can move ahead with considering the other factors as well.
How’s the customer support?
Customer support is yet another very important factors to consider while selecting your test automation tool. Once you select the tool, finalize it, pay for it, and if somehow, you run into some of the issues and try contacting their support if it works or not. It really becomes tiresome if you do not hear back from them. You also feel handicapped without proper support while you run into an issue. Hence, the tool you select should have proper customer support.
Again, you need to be sure of this before finalizing the tool for you. One way is to read some of the customer reviews online like how are they in their support or you can also test this while you already are in the trial period. If they treat you well in their free plan then they will also care for you once you become their customer.
What and who will be automating testing?
Testing requirements are the major factor while selecting the test automation tool. What if the tool selected does have good customer support, is easy to set up but does not meet your requirements?
The major thing to note here is that the tool should be best for you in all the ways. With the tool’s look and feel you should feel that the tool is made specifically for you.
So, while choosing the test automation tool for you and for your team, you should know what is it that you’ll be testing with the tool? Who all will be using the testing tool? Does the testers who will be using it are familiar to the testing languages it support? Does the tool require some technical knowledge to be in action? Does your team members’ skill set align with the tools technical requirements? Have your team performed automation before? Will be using it to automate regression tests, or functional tests or cross browser tests or some other tests?
If you’re looking for automating a specific type of test say a Cross-browser test, then you should go for a tool which aligns with the requirements of the cross-browser test. You should go for browser coverage, framework support, language support, and other major factors like this. If you’re going to automate cross-browser tests, tools like LambdaTest can help. Since I have mentioned various factors, you need to evaluate it for all of them like browser support, scalability, speed, performance. LambdaTest provides you all of them however, you should not miss the free trial usage before moving to the paid plans. Also, you need to consider the other features as well.
Does the tool support the other tools you use?
In software, the tools supported and integration is one of the major factors while selecting the tool for you. No software works independently, each tool makes use of the other tool for one thing or another. So, if you are performing tests, you need one tool for testing, one for reporting, one for automating, one for analyzing, one for management and the list goes on. However, if you select the tool that meets most of your requirements, you’ll still need to look out for its support with other tools.
For example, while selecting an Online Selenium Grid for automating cross-browser tests, you need to look out for the support of automation tools like Selenium, QTP, etc that you’ll be using. Also, if your team uses some bug management tool in-house, you need to see if the grid allows you to integrate with that or not? These types of support leave you with fewer efforts. Just like LambdaTest allows support for Selenium and integration with major bug management and communication tools like JIRA, Asana, Slack, Trello, Github and many other tools.
Does the tool meet your reporting and analysis needs?
Since you are looking for a tool, you need to make sure that you need as less as supporting tools as you can. If an automation testing tool is what you’re looking for, you need to make sure that the tool allows you an easier reporting and analysis of tests that you’ve performed. There are some fields like tests run, passed, failed, bugs encountered, etc should be handy to you. Hence, you need to go for a tool which allows you the following features inbuilt and easily accessible.
Can you maintain your tests?
Just like reporting and analysis, this is one feature that majority of the testers and developers look out for in their test automation tool. Maintaining and managing tests run helps the testing team to easily prioritize and escalate the severe bugs to the team for immediate attention. Following this, you can move to the faster bug fixing, easy management, less hassle between the teams, easy execution, and faster delivery of your project.
So, while selecting a test automation tool there are various features that we need to look and analyze very carefully. The tool you select should not increase your time and efforts, rather it should bring ease and comfort to your life, offering you a helping hand in your testing methods. You need to be extra careful and cautious while selecting your test automation tool. Hence, don’t forget to look out for your tool very carefully, Analyze it before even spending a single buck on the tool which you’ll not find useful in the near future or some tool which creates more hassle and confusion in your team when implemented.
Test automation tool implementation is a very important process, make sure you selected the best automation tool. If you have any doubts before selecting your best test automation tool, leave me a comment below, might be I can be of more help.
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