What to Consider Before Choosing a Testing Tool for Your Software Development Platform?

Mixing automatic and manual testing isn’t only a new trend. It’s an approach that can improve your software development productivity and help create better apps. 

Depending on the project, you can usually automate at least three out of four tests. If you want to maximize this method’s potential, you’ll need to use automation tools for testing, which reduce the time of the process and help specialists concentrate their efforts on the other tasks. The question is how to choose them, and this article will analyze the factors to assist in making the best decision!

Manual tests involve a human performing the desired checks. It used to be the only available approach, but technology made automated testing possible. Thanks to test automation, humans only need to adjust the parameters and execute the test. The computer will do the rest.

Here’s a quick overview of the advantages brought by test automation:

There’s no best automation testing tool. It’s not about one-size-fits-all but finding the option that meets your expectations. Here’s what to consider when choosing a test automation solution!

The majority divides them into two categories:

Some companies might need a custom framework, especially for niche projects. That’s when the developers design their customized testing tool. However, this requires tech experts and doesn’t happen often.

Your ideal automated testing tool should handle different test types. Do you need to perform a unit test to check a specific feature? Perhaps you are ready for integration tests to see how different modules work together? Even A/B acceptance or stress load testing can be automated.

While it’s nice to have maximum flexibility, start with the features you need. Would you like to focus on API testing? If yes, you can go for a tool specializing in that department. An approach where you test the tool before you buy, or at least see it in action, will ensure it covers the areas you need.

You are working on a game or professional desktop software solution. It’s necessary to run it on Windows, but also Mac or Linux operating systems. You’ll need to test how your software performs on these OSs. It’s a hassle to do that manually, so automatic tests supporting multiple platforms are recommended.

Apart from various operating systems, consider automated testing tools supporting different browsers. That includes Firefox, Chrome, and other popular solutions. It’s highly recommended for those working on web-based apps. Your goal is the ultimate performance regardless of the browser the clients use. Testing everything on different browsers will ensure you meet their expectations.

Implementing automation testing tools into a software development process takes time. Test automation comes with a learning curve. Most companies choose at least one engineer to specialize in working with these solutions. The creators can help by delivering a friendly user interface that simplifies test creation.

It’s not only about conducting tests but analyzing their results. Most automation tools come with dashboards that provide an overview of how many times you ran a test, the tests that failed, etc. Some automated tools can collect different information while testing. You could see the page loading time and compare it to earlier in the development process, pointing out that pages might take much longer to load than before. These useful statistics provided by test automation tools could prove incredibly handy.

Here are some other things that could help pick the best testing automation tool:

You shouldn’t rush when choosing a test automation tool. It must have all the features your development team requires. The ease of use and premium support might simplify implementing the automation process in your company. It always helps to have a tool with maximum coverage for different test types. It takes time to find the right balance between automated and manual testing. But once you optimize the overall testing process, you’ll see how much automation improved productivity and benefited your company!