Significance of Scriptless Test Automation in the World of Testing

The level of test automation has dramatically increased not only in quantity but also in quality because of technological advancements.  

To achieve their business goals, many companies are now migrating to test automation, employing various tools and technologies.  

Every company wishes for better productivity, faster development, and high-quality delivery at a low cost, and automation testing can help them achieve this. 

Test Automation is further classified into three levels – Scripting/Coding, Advanced Test Automation using Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Scriptless Test Automation. 

Understanding Scriptless Test Automation 

Scriptless test automation is one of the ways to increase the scalability of test automation. 

Testers and business users may automate test cases without having to worry about coding with scriptless test automation. 

It aids in achieving faster results and cuts down on the time spent learning the code. 

The entire software development process can be sped up with the use of scriptless test automation.  

The method enables businesses to engage in test automation while also increasing the reusability of code.  

By using the scriptless architecture, development teams will be able to solve the most difficult challenge of spending more time on script development.  

In addition, the methodology aids organizations in reducing the complexity of test automation.  

This approach to automation will not only assist businesses in saving time and effort for their teams, but it will also ensure that quality and ease of meeting their criteria are maintained. 

Scriptless testing might be a viable alternative for organizations that are having trouble automating tests.   

It has a number of advantages over traditional test automation techniques.  

You may need it to keep up with the shipping pace as applications become more complicated and cannot adhere to Test Automation due to its several challenges. 

What are the challenges faced in Test Automation 

Software testing is incomplete without test automation. We can speed up the software validation process and boost testing coverage by employing automated testing.  

However, implementing test automation for applications under test is fraught with problems. 

In the current scenario, the industry faces several business and technical challenges in test automation. 

Business Problems: 

• Time to Market: Continuous drive to shorten lead time to change and the need for tools and techniques to accelerate software delivery. 
• Production Quality: Challenges in maintaining stability of existing production capabilities (particularly while repaying technical debt). 
• Availability of Skilled Resources: Programming skills for scripting-based tools are seldom available and also require additional investments. 
• Inadequate RoI: Current test automation solutions are technical in nature, requiring specialists to operate the tools, resulting in higher costs of investment. 

Technical Problems: 

• Reusability of Test Cases: Challenges with reusing test assets given that they are developed by multiple stakeholders (functional test engineers, automation engineers, etc.). 
• Usability and reliability: Need for specialized skills to develop test automation assets; small changes in application under test environment leading to failures or false alarms. 
• Scalability: Custom test frameworks are limited by the capability of the platform to accept multi-stakeholder test artefacts or execute across multiple platforms. 
• Maintainability: Current test automation solutions are technical in nature, requiring specialists to operate the tools, resulting in higher costs of investment. 

Scriptless Test Automation plays a key role in overcoming the challenges faced by Test Automation. 

How does Scriptless Test Automation help overcome these challenges 

Scriptless automation addresses the limitations of traditional test automation and helps meet businesses’ digital era test automation expectations of speed, scale, agility, quality, intelligence, and resilience.  

Below are some of the factors that help Scriptless Test Automation overcome the challenges faced by Test Automation. 

• Democratizing Test Automation 
• Improved Stability and Reliability 
• Scale test automation coverage 
• Improved productivity 
• Reduced cost of quality 
• Higher ROI – with faster test script creation and reduced maintenance. 

While this is imperative in overcoming the challenges, it is also vital to understand the key drivers for the rise in adoption of Scriptless Test Automation. 

Key drivers for the rise in adoption of Scriptless Test Automation  

According to GlobeNewsWire, “The global automation testing market size is expected to grow from USD 12.6 billion in 2019 to USD 28.8 billion by 2024, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 18% during the forecast period”. 

Some of the key drivers for the rise in adoption of Scriptless Test Automation are as listed below: 

• Includes model Based Testing: Using NLP technologies or speech recognition for automatic conversion of manual test cases to automated scripts. 
• Generates Test Insights: Using artificial intelligence to create actionable insights from testing cycles. 
• Integrated with CI/CD & Cloud: Most scriptless tools provide default integrations with lifecycle tools, as opposed to traditional tools needing custom development to integrate. 
• Defect Prediction capabilities: Identifying defects early and incorporating machine learning to improve accuracy in future defect classification. 
• Easy adoption of skill set: As Script-less tools are easy to learn and implement, organizations can also use Business Analysts to implement the automation. 
• Need to optimize time to market: 50% greater speed for test script creation as compared to scripting tools. Also, reduce maintenance time by 80% as Scripless tests are easy to fix and leverage AI.

While procuring Scriptless Test Automation services, it is imperative to take the critical success factors into consideration. 

Critical Success Factors to be taken into consideration for procuring Scriptless Test Automation Services 

Developers have long understood that today’s “low-code/no-code” methodologies are a cost-effective way to meet the never-ending need for more software delivered faster.  

Despite this, most testers continue to struggle with the low-maintenance, script-based testing strategy that was developed decades ago.  

Why not take a cue from development and adopt a new, lighter approach to testing? 

By optimizing reuse and reducing the need for hand-coding, low-code/no-code approaches enable companies to develop software as quickly as startups.  

Teams may focus on high-level, strategic work that adds corporate value, freed from the difficulties of low-level implementation details, with enhanced creativity and collaboration. 

Here are some of the critical success factors to be taken into consideration while procuring Scriptless Test Automation services. 

• QE and Automation Engineering DNA: Broad testing and Quality Engineering capabilities help meet digital era test automation expectations of speed, scale, agility, quality, intelligence, and resilience. 
• Strategic partnerships: Partnerships with global players drive inhouse IP development, possess requisite skills, and develop product knowledge building. 
• In depth domain knowledge: Inhouse domain knowledge helps understand the ins and outs, drives automation ROI, reduces test script creation and maintenance time, and reduces dependency on automation SME. 
• Seamless migration capabilities: Seamless migration and adoption from script-based to script migrator tools helps migrate customers seamlessly from script-based to script-less tools. 
• Experience with Packaged apps: Experience working with automation of Enterprise Packaged applications helps faster Time to Market and Test Coverage for Packaged apps. 

We have the chance to reinvent testing for modern delivery with the same low-code/no-code strategy that is greatly speeding software development now that the testing tools market has progressed beyond the heavyweight script-based platforms built decades ago. 

This approach to automation will not only assist businesses in saving time and effort for their teams, but it will also ensure that quality and ease of meeting their criteria are maintained.   

The key advantages of scriptless automation are detailed below. 

Benefits of Scriptless Test Automation 

The tests’ scriptless design allows business users to participate and acts as a conduit for communication between business analysts and technical experts. Business analysts and functional experts can communicate and discuss test cases more easily.  

Here are some of the benefits of Scriptless Test Automation. 

• RESOURCE OPTIMIZATION – It does not require thorough programming knowledge and, therefore, resolves the challenge related to the shortage of skilled resources. 
• VELOCITY – It accelerates the test scripting and designing process, thereby, speeding up the development as well. 
• SEAMLESS OPERATIONS – It can work in parallel with the development process, which means that QA does not become a bottleneck at the end of an SDLC. 
• SCALABILITY – By simplifying test script creation and automating test case designing, validation, and execution, it makes the test automation approach robust and scalable. 
• MAINTENANCE AND REUSABILITY – With script-less test automation, the test cases are easy to maintain and are reusable. 
• EASE OF USE – As there is a minimum requirement for coding, business stakeholders can also participate in the QA process and offer valuable reviews to enhance the quality of the end product. 

Scriptless test automation eliminates the need for coding and allows users to automate their tests without having to learn a programming language. 

Scriptless test automation creates automated tests by utilizing available code assets, which are essentially user-based activities known as “constructors” or “keywords.”   

This type of automated testing also allows users to create keywords for tasks like web service testing, database handling, file handling, and arithmetic calculations, providing them with the ability to apply them across technologies, tools, and applications. 

Conclusion 

Clearly, scriptless test automation alleviates a significant number of the negative traits associated with automated testing. 

Scriptless test automation allows for reliable automation in the quickest time possible. However, in order to expedite test automation projects, the involvement of automation experts is essential. 

Cigniti’s intelligent no-scripting test automation (iNSta) platform enables the building of production grade test automation suites. It provides a test design studio that aids reusable test asset development. It leverages AI technologies to provide an adaptive frame that supports automation artifacts to evolve in sync with the application under test (AUT). The test execution engine integrates with the latest CI/CD tools and cloud (Sauce Labs, Browser Stack) infrastructure to support continuous testing. 

The key differentiators of iNSta are – 

• Plan 2 ExecuteTM: AI based test methodology which will help teams to do holistic test planning and execution. 
• Intelligent Object Locators: AI powered engine identifies the stable and reliable locators for each object. 
• Visual Validator: AI powered visual validator validates the GUI while your automation scripts are being executed. 
• Report 2 ResolveTM: Automatically adapt to application changes and self-heal tests to make sure tests never fail. 
• Resolve 2 RemediateTM: Intelligent Script maintenance engine recommends script changes no matter how many times an application under test (AUT) changes. 
• Test Suite Optimization: AI model that optimizes the test suite to pick the right set of tests to execute with maximum coverage. 

Need help? Schedule a call with our Scriptless Test Automation experts to find out more about the significance of Scriptless Test Automation in the world of testing whilst understanding the benefits of our intelligent no-scripting test automation (iNSta) platform.