Com­mon mis­takes in test automa­tion implementation

In a pre­vi­ous blog post, we explored some test­ing ter­mi­nol­o­gy and cov­ered the fun­da­men­tal con­cepts of soft­ware test­ing. Now, we will delve deep­er into prac­ti­cal chal­lenges and exam­ine the most com­mon mis­takes that can under­mine the effi­cien­cy and reli­a­bil­i­ty of test automa­tion. Care­ful plan­ning and best prac­tices help avoid pit­falls and max­i­mize the ben­e­fits of test automation.

Test automa­tion is still too often dis­missed when plan­ning ERP trans­for­ma­tions. Anoth­er pit­fall is that the time allo­cat­ed for plan­ning and imple­ment­ing test automa­tion is often too lim­it­ed, which is why it is not uti­lized in all ERP projects. How­ev­er, the demand for con­tin­u­ous test­ing is increas­ing due to the fact that orga­ni­za­tions are run­ning their ERPs in cloud more and more. Cloud ERPs bring reg­u­lar and fre­quent updates and short­er inno­va­tion cycles which in turn shifts the focus toward test automa­tion, mak­ing it a rec­om­mend­ed option even for sup­port­ing small­er ERP initiatives.

On the oth­er hand, some­times orga­ni­za­tions have unre­al­is­tic test automa­tion imple­men­ta­tion expec­ta­tions, assum­ing that automa­tion will solve all test­ing chal­lenges. If the test­ing process­es are already defi­cient, automa­tion alone will not improve the situation.

Avoid­ing pit­falls in test automa­tion implementation

1. Plan­ning

One of the most fre­quent mis­takes in test automa­tion imple­men­ta­tion is inad­e­quate test plan­ning. Test­ing should com­pre­hen­sive­ly cov­er dif­fer­ent lev­els and types of tests, but too often, automa­tion is used inap­pro­pri­ate­ly. Tests may fail due to issues relat­ed to tim­ing or depen­den­cies, reduc­ing their reli­a­bil­i­ty and mak­ing devel­op­ers skep­ti­cal about test automa­tion. Instead of striv­ing to auto­mate 100% of the tests dur­ing the imple­men­ta­tion project, more atten­tion should be paid to strate­gic risk analy­sis, which helps iden­ti­fy the most suit­able test sce­nar­ios for automation.

2. Main­te­nance

Anoth­er com­mon mis­take is neglect­ing test automa­tion main­te­nance. Test cas­es should be easy to main­tain and inte­grate. If updat­ing tests takes more time than run­ning them man­u­al­ly, automa­tion can become inef­fi­cient and cost­ly. It is rec­om­mend­ed to refac­tor the test code, which means improv­ing the struc­ture of the code with­out alter­ing its func­tion­al­i­ty. Refac­tor­ing enhances code read­abil­i­ty, sim­pli­fies main­te­nance, and sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces bugs in test­ing. It also sup­ports the elim­i­na­tion of dupli­cates and ensures com­pli­ance with estab­lished test­ing qual­i­ty stan­dards. It is advis­able to apply the same prin­ci­ples to test code as to pro­duc­tion code: a clear struc­ture, reusabil­i­ty, and doc­u­men­ta­tion con­tribute to reli­able and high-qual­i­ty test­ing. More­over, envi­ron­ment man­age­ment and test data qual­i­ty should not be over­looked, as auto­mat­ed tests can­not yield reli­able results with­out prop­er test data.

3. Test data

Dur­ing an imple­men­ta­tion project, test cas­es are high­ly depen­dent on the data used, caus­ing numer­ous chal­lenges for many orga­ni­za­tions. In some cas­es, gen­er­at­ing arti­fi­cial data dur­ing test­ing results in unre­li­able test out­comes. Test data should ide­al­ly be pre­pared well in advance. Ide­al­ly, this should be part of the data har­mo­niza­tion process before the actu­al ERP project. In the ear­ly stages of the imple­men­ta­tion project, it may not be nec­es­sary to han­dle the full amount of orga­ni­za­tion­al data, but good and reli­able test results can already be achieved when real exam­ples from the cur­rent pro­duc­tion envi­ron­ment are avail­able in the test envi­ron­ment. If the pro­duc­tion system’s data is not yet avail­able, a solu­tion could be using so-called stan­dard­ized test data, which improves test diag­nos­tics, accel­er­ates test exe­cu­tion, reduces test unre­li­a­bil­i­ty, and enhances secu­ri­ty by ensur­ing that real cus­tomer data is not involved in the system.

4. Uni­fied approach

Occa­sion­al­ly, imple­men­ta­tion projects face sit­u­a­tions where test automa­tion is frag­ment­ed with­out a uni­fied approach. In the worst-case sce­nario, dif­fer­ent teams imple­ment automa­tion in dif­fer­ent ways, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to man­age and devel­op effi­cient­ly. This can result in sub­op­ti­mal ben­e­fits from test automation.

5. Tech­ni­cal challenges

Tech­ni­cal chal­lenges can also hin­der test automa­tion imple­men­ta­tion. Issues such as tool com­pat­i­bil­i­ty prob­lems or the rapid evo­lu­tion of tech­nol­o­gy may lead to out­dat­ed test­ing sys­tems. Addi­tion­al­ly, inter­nal orga­ni­za­tion­al chal­lenges, such as lack of man­age­ment sup­port, insuf­fi­cient resources, and lack of train­ing, pose sig­nif­i­cant obsta­cles to suc­cess­ful automa­tion implementation.

Test automa­tion is a pow­er­ful tool, but it can­not replace care­ful­ly planned and exe­cut­ed test­ing. It should be part of a com­pre­hen­sive test­ing strat­e­gy that con­sid­ers both man­u­al test­ing and the pos­si­bil­i­ties and lim­i­ta­tions of automa­tion. In our next blog post, we will focus on the ben­e­fits achieved through test automation.

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