Common Problems in Test Automation

Few years back, I have prepared few documents about automation scripting and concepts. This post will list the common problems faced by software industries in their test automation attempts.

Automation is not cheap
Test Automation is not cheap. Usually it takes between 3 to 10 times as long to create, verify and document the automated test as it takes to create and run once by hand. Test Automation takes lesser time to create than to test each test scripts.

Easy to run test alone is automated
Many test groups automate only the easy to run tests because early in testing, these are easy to design and the program might not be capable of running more complex test cases. Hence harsh test needs to be done by the skilled manual tester.

Duplicate information was kept in multiple repositories
Most of the project teams purchases a test management tool in addition to the already existing automated testing tools. Duplicate information was kept in multiple repositories and was very difficult to maintain. In several instances, the implementation of more tools actually results in less productivity.

Test Scripts duplicates the development effort
Test script development results in an almost complete duplication of the development effort, through overuse of the testing tool’s programming language. In normal case the application itself used a complex algorithm and again the tester recreates these algorithms using the testing tool. Too much time was spent on automating scripts, without much additional value gained. The test team must be careful not to duplicate the development effort; this is a risk when developing elaborate test scripts.

A lack of test development guidelines was noted
One program had several test automation engineers, each using a different style for creating test scripts. Maintaining the scripts is a nightmare. This is due to the non-availability of development guidelines and hence script readability and maintainability becomes complicated.

Reports generated by the tool is futile
More time is spent by the testers in setting up elaborate customized reports, which is part of the automated testing tool. The reports were never used, since the data required for the report is never accumulated in the tool.