Are Testers Losing Their Grip Over Testing Due to Automation?

Amid Automation, Testers at the Verge of Becoming Automation Test Developers:

In this digital world, automation has become the core for businesses to grow and expand. Automation has revolutionized the way organizations operate their businesses.

The pace of advancement in technology has been on a continual increase for the last decade and lead us to a new automation age. The impact of automation is quite evident on distinct industries, including Software industry itself. 

An Overview on the Landscape of Software Industry

The software industry is comprised of companies and organizations which develop software to make jobs easy in other industries such as healthcare, insurance, retail etc.

The Software companies develop software with an intent to solve a business problem of any organization or to make it as an accelerator to bolster any organization’s business.

The Power of Automation in Software Industry

Automation is acting too fast in the software industry as compared to other industries. Adoption of Technological advancements such as DevOps, Analytics, and Cloud has already been in full swing, which is leading to job loss.

As per Cognizant’s global survey, 25 to 40% survey participants have already automated their workflows. Companies are inclining towards automation as it is driving them to greater savings. Most of the IT majors, who have automated their workflows, are able to cut down costs on productivity, infrastructure, and resources.

According to Hfs Research, IT industry will face 1.4 million jobs’ loss across countries like the Philippines, the United Kingdom, and the United States by 2022.

The Impact of Automation on the overlooked Software Testing

Through the process of Software Testing, Software companies ensure that the developed software is as per the requirement. Software Testing consists of steps which are followed to find defects in a software; where defect can be anything which deviates the software from what it intends to.

Software Testing acts like a pillar for the Software Industry, empowering to deliver Quality Software to clientele across industries.

The following points shed light on why Software Testing is so important:

• Software Testing is mandatory to ensure the Quality of the Software which will be delivered to help businesses.
• It is necessary for identifying whether the application meets the Customer’s reliability and satisfaction.
• It is important to ensure against failures before the software is into the market, else it can put down the company’s brand.

Previously, Software Testing was considered as a thankless job and people used to overlook it but the scenario has changed gradually. Software Testing has its importance in Software industry now. Companies have started to allocate budget to Software Testing and have maintained a team of testers.

With the emergence of AGILE, Software Testing has become repetitive; and regression testing has become the need of the hour.

Manual regression testing consumes a lot of time and effort, and companies are not ready to afford both- time and cost. So, automation has become a boon and consequently, automation testing and automation testing tools have emerged. Thus, affecting the jobs of manual testers and opening doors for automation test engineers who are more or less developers.

The buzz “Faster Time to Market” pushed to adopt automation testing

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Certain skills of testers such as cognitive and creative, which actually makes a tester a value-added tester are overlooked now.

In the race of “Faster Time to Market”, Automation testing has become the tool to achieve it. If the actual skill of tester is lost, then the real-world QA feedback will be lost. It is because when the Software undergoes automation testing, it will be a testing process of executing test scripts developed by automation test engineers which are more towards covering positive test scenarios because an automation engineer thinks like a developer. Covering overall negative test cases will be a challenge.

Testers might lose their grip over testing due to automation

Automation test engineers leverage automation testing tools and their technical skills to create automation test scripts but they lack actual domain knowledge and testing skills which are the most essential elements for quality software delivery.

Real testers, who are passionate about testing and who are adept at testing, utilize all their domain knowledge to identify all possible test scenarios which address critical business scenarios. Moreover, they are well experienced and capable enough to create effective test cases to surround all the identified test scenarios.

Testers implement Test Design methods on which they hold the knowledge to ensure maximum functional test coverage for an “Application under Test”.

The most important aspect of a real tester is that they understand customer’s expectation and behavior apart from application testing.

For example, One product is deployed for different clients and each client has his own set of expectation, a real tester will put himself in client’s shoe and does the testing to meet client’s expectation. A real tester always aims to customer’s satisfaction.

With the rise of automation and job loss scenario of manual testers, most of the testers are in a dilemma if they will keep up with their jobs or not and they are attempting to become automation test engineers by learning Selenium or UFP or other automation testing tools which prevail in the market. So, they might end up becoming automation testers who focus more on coding than on actual testing.

Recommended read => Getting started with Manual Testing – A Real Project

Doing Automation Testing without scripting and technical knowledge

Instead of letting testers to become automation test engineers, what if they are empowered to do automation testing?  Script-less functional test automation tools can help testers to do automation testing and it can also help organizations who know that testers’ domain knowledge and testing skill are essential for quality software delivery.

Functional accuracy for an application can be assured only when it is tested by those testers who not only have knowledge on the line of business that application represents but also understand the functionality of the application to the core. This is their asset which they have gleaned over the years working as a tester.

Automation testing tools, which can act as an accelerator to do automation testing without coding or scripting really, help testers to stick to their core skill.

About the Author: Pavan carries 17 years of experience working with start-ups and enterprises and brings broad technology experience and expertise in building multiple software products. Specialized in strategic management, IT product development and software quality assurance, Business Operations and Cloud Infrastructure Management.

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