Prepare Your QA Team for Test Automation
May 06, 2021
The QA team is responsible for creating and maintaining the test automation scripts that have been written. Even before that is done, they need to identify appropriate scenarios that should be written, create the test automation strategy, and essentially guide and influence whether or not the expected ROI on test automation is achieved. This is a lot of responsibility, and it could be the determining factor in whether time is wasted or saved. As a result, choosing the members of that QA team and structuring it correctly is very important. In structuring your QA team for test automation there are four key things to do.
Here is a summary of things to do when preparing your QA team for test automation. Check out the full article here.
Determine the Goal of Test Automation and Share the Strategy with Team
A test automation strategy defines the frameworks you’re going to use to get reusable, automated scripts, as well as how you’re going to create and maintain those scripts. You need to do this in order to get a return on your investment. After creating your test automation strategy, you and your team should be able to establish what you’re going to automate, how you’ll go about automating it, who will be doing the automation, when the automation will be done, and what environments will be used.
Identify Team Roles and Responsibilities
In selecting your test automation team, you should have a mix of junior and senior members. The senior members of the team should be experienced in the language and framework you have selected and be able to create test automation frameworks independently. They should be well versed in test automation best practices, such as data management, selecting the correct tests to automate, identifying the level of test automation to be done, and using API and database automation to set up and populate scenarios for UI automation. The junior members of your team will learn from the senior members, but they should also know the language and be familiar with creating test automation scripts. Junior engineers are great for helping to maintain the test automation project; they will also learn a great deal that will in time help them develop into strong senior engineers. This mix will allow for all members of your team to learn and grow, while having a great test automation project.
Training Time
It is very important for all members of the team to be properly trained, as well as aware and confident in their role on the team. Training manual testers to start writing test automation code is a process. They will first need to know an object-oriented programming language, such as Python, Javascript, or Java, along with how to find locators and use the specific test automation framework in which their code for the project will be written.
You should also ensure they are properly trained before the project starts; otherwise, you will need to enlist your senior engineer to spend time teaching a programming language and a test automation framework to the test automation team.
Provide Support
Test automation is a team effort. In order for it to be effective and provide a great return on investment, the test automation team must be supported. When creating scripts, the test automation team will need to find locators on the application in order to carry out UI automation. The development team can support this by having updated and easy-to-use IDs and classes that makes the application easier to automate. They can also create and maintain unit tests and help to build out any pipelines that may be needed.
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Overall, in preparing your team for test automation, you should have a solid strategy they understand, specific roles and responsibilities, and a mixture of junior and senior engineers who have been properly trained and are supported by management and their team.
Check out the full article here.