Artificial intelligence in the software testing domain will only optimize the testing process by performing repetitive tasks with utmost precision, providing reports on code quality and also systematically organizing the testing process. AI testing tools will prove to be rewarding in terms of taking up the automation activities a notch higher. These tools can be properly configured, performance can be analysed and correct results can be made attainable. In this article, you will know about the role of artificial intelligence in software testing. ​

Rapidly changing IT has necessitated the need for high-quality and stable products. To deliver quality products to customers’ enterprises adopt various software testing practices. Among the various software testing methods, functional testing is one of the most important testing methods. Let us now try to understand some of the best practices of this testing method in detail. 

What is functional testing?
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It is a black box type of software testing method that is performed to validate the functionality of the software. The main purpose of this test is to check each functionality of the application by providing certain inputs and validating the outputs against the functional requirements. It is also known as specification-based testing as it is completely based on program specifications. This test checks User Interface, APIs, Database, Security, Client/Server communication, and other functionalities of the application.

Why functional testing is performed?
Here are some of the reasons that depict the need for this testing

• Validates the functionality and reliability of the software
• Verifies that all the functional requirements as stated in the SRS document are fulfilled
• Ensures that the system is free from all functional defects or bottlenecks
• Checks the usability, accessibility, and other important functionalities of the software
• Enhances UX by focusing more on customer requirements than customer expectations

What are the best practices of functional testing?

Here are some of the best practices of this testing method:

Gather all information and plan the test: Before starting the test all teams must have a proper understanding of what is to be tested and what strategy is to be followed.  

Prioritize the test cases: Prioritize the test cases based on difficulty levels and write test cases early in the requirement analysis and design phase.  

Write reusable test cases: Test cases take a lot of time and expertise to work on. So having reusable test cases is beneficial to save time. And, to create reusable test cases, plain language should be preferred as it makes the process quick and tests are easy to execute.  

​Test early and test often: Early testing helps in the early identification and fixing of defects in the initial phases of SDLC. Also, the software should be tested often with the help of the regression testing method to ensure that any recent code changes do not affect the existing functionality of the software.

Automate wherever possible: Automation helps teams to save time and money, however, it should be noted that 100% automation is a myth. Thus, testers should segregate the test cases that can be automated and that need manual testing to ensure a smooth testing process.  

Centralize data storage system: By centralizing the data store system, data will be available to all team members and can be referred by anyone at any point in time. It will eliminate the chances of repeated data, report, or errors that occur due to a decentralized data system
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Create a traceability matrix: To capture all requirements provided by the client, it is necessary to create a traceability matrix and it maps the user requirements with the test cases. Providing coverage of all functionalities when conducting software testing is beneficial.

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​Conclusion: A fully functional product that works as expected and delivers seamless UX to customers is needed by every business. To achieve such a product functional testing plays an important role. It works as an integral part of a software testing and quality assurance process and tests the end-to-end functionality of the software. Leverage functional testing from a next-gen QA and software testing services provider to get high-quality software.

About the author: I am a technical content writer and I write articles on various IT-related topics. In this article, I have tried to share my views on the best practices of functional testing. 

​Elements of digital transformation:

1. Develop clearly defined goals: In many instances, it has been found that lack of goal-setting and planning the digital transformation activities has been the cause of failure. Certain organizations just go for those technologies that are popular and trendy without even knowing whether it is required to meet their business objectives. Hence, goals need to be meticulously prepared that covers processes, technologies and tasks for accomplishing goals.

Some of the key questions to ponder upon are:

• Why does an organization want to invest in digital transformation?  Cite specific reasons
• What are the priorities that need to be met? Some of the key priorities that can be taken into consideration are increasing supply chain efficiency, reduction of spending on IT, building a more flexible business, boosting sales etc. 

2. Implement a workable strategy: An organization’s IT infrastructure needs to be focused upon. How well are the systems integrated and what is their level of efficiency needs to be scrutinized. The data and processes that are integrated across departments and multiple systems while breaking through information silos is what actually brings fruition.

3. Top-level management is accountable: To carry out digital transformation strategies seamlessly, a top-level management team, especially CMOs and CIOs are required. If due to any non-availability, at least their respective departments can come up with some meaningful solutions. To leverage marketing activities and enhance customer experience, the CMO and CIO must work unitedly to come up with effective and pragmatic ideas.

The CMO and marketing team must collaborate with CIO and IT team in order to ensure that the security and operational aspects of marketing’s digital systems are optimized.

4. A flexible infrastructure needs to be constructed: Another key element is to maintain flexibility. To increase flexibility, legacy, on-premises systems can be transformed into cloud-based, microservices-based systems. Organizations can achieve greater scalability, agility and location-independence when on-premises monolithic applications are refactored into networks of microservices that are cloud-friendly. Through a microservices-based model, different features and services can be added, removed and updated in a faster, easier and affordable manner.
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5. Hire skilled professionals: Hiring the right IT professionals goes a long way in making the digital transformation strategies a success. The IT staff must understand that to meet specific objectives, they have to be skilled in certain technologies. Some of the technologies where the need to hire IT professionals are listed below:    

• Cloud migration
• API-first development
• Data science
• Data engineering
• App migration 
• Data integration
• Microservices-based development
• Web app development
• Remote team management

Conclusion: The above-mentioned elements will help an organization embrace and tactically implement digital technologies to chart out a new roadmap for progressive development. If you are looking for in-depth advice on how digital transformation can help your business grow through some definitive strategies, then just go for a company that can truly justify your requirements. 

About the author: I am a technical content writer focused on writing technology specific articles. Software testing is one of the areas in which I’m really interested. ​

As enterprises continue to work in a fast-paced environment, the need for high-quality and stable products that deliver a seamless experience to the customer is also rising. To achieve this goal enterprise adopts various software testing practices. Among the various kind of software testing methods that enterprises adopt, functional testing is one most important testing methods. This test checks the main thing in software i.e. its functionality which needs to as expected for its success. Let us try to understand some of the best practices of this testing method in detail. 

What is functional testing?
It is a black box software testing method that validates the functionality of the software. The main purpose of this test is to test each functionality of the application by providing certain inputs and validating the outputs against the functional requirements. It is also known as specification-based testing as it is completely based on program specifications. This test helps teams to ensure that the software meets the functional and business requirements and works as expected.

​What are the different types of functional testing?
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Below mentioned are the different types of functional tests:

1. Unit test – It is the first phase of the software testing process. The main aim of this test is to ensure that the smallest possible units/components of the software works as expected after isolation. It is performed by developers
2. Component test – It is similar to the unit testing method but the only difference is that it is performed by testers and it tests each object of the application separately with or without isolation of other software objects
3. Smoke test – It is also known as build verification testing and helps to identify whether the build is stable or not and ensures if the build can be used for the further testing process
4. Sanity test – It validates whether the code changes received in the software build are working as expected or not.
5. Integration test- In this test individual module of the application are combined and tested as a group to identify the functionality after combining different modules
6. Regression test – This test helps to ensure that recent code change in software does not affect the existing functionality of the software
7. System test – This test the system as a whole and ensures that all components of the software are working well
8. User acceptance test – In this test method, the end users/client tests the product to ensure it is meeting all requirements and working as expected. This test helps to gain approval for product quality and release of the product 

What are the best practices of functional testing?

 Below mentioned are some of the best practices of this testing method:

1.  Prioritize test cases and start writing early: It is important to prioritize the test cases based on difficulty levels and write test cases early in the requirement analysis and design phases to achieve practical testing goals.
2. Write reusable test cases: Test cases take a lot of time and expertise to work on. So having reusable test cases is beneficial to save time. And, to create reusable test cases, simple language should be preferred as it makes the process quick and tests are easy to execute.
3. Test early and test often: Early testing helps in the early identification of defects in the software development life cycle. It helps in fixing the issues early in the initial phases itself. Also, regression testing should be adopted to make sure that whenever the changes are made in code, it does not affect the functionality of the software.
4. Automate wherever possible: Automation helps to save time and money. By automating the test cases, manual prone errors are removed, tests get faster and better. But, it should be noted that 100% automation is not possible, therefore testers need to decide which of the test cases should be automated first and which can be executed manually. A perfect balance of manual & automation testing is the key to the success of the software testing process.
5. Centralize the data storage system: Usually when multiple people working on the same or similar tasks, it leads to repetition of files or reports that created confusion. A centralized database management system, which can be referred by anyone, should be maintained to solve this problem effectively
6. Create a traceability matrix: To capture all requirements provided by the client, it is necessary to create a traceability matrix. Traceability matrix maps the user requirements with the test cases and provides relevant information about the test coverage of all functionalities
7. Report and analyze the results: Overall, the report of test results should be presented in a clear, concise, and accurate manner. This helps stakeholders to make an informed decision about the product

Conclusion: Every enterprise needs fully functional and high-quality software to uplift their customer’s experience. This is where functional testing plays its role. It is an integral part of a software testing and quality assurance process. This testing method helps businesses in delivering quality software that assures satisfying user experiences. Leverage functional testing from a next-gen, QA, and software testing company to get high-quality products that are free from all functional defects and that also perfectly meets customer requirements and business objectives.
 
About the author: I am a technical content writer and I write articles on various IT-related topics. In this article, I have tried to share my views on best practices for functional testing.

Today, every enterprise wants faster and continuous releases. Therefore, businesses are shifting from the waterfall approach to the DevOps approach. In DevOps methodology, continuous delivery plays an important role, but sometimes people use the terms DevOps and continuous delivery interchangeably. However, there is a clear distinction between these two terms, and at the same time, these two terms share common goals and background. Let us now try to understand these two terms in more detail and let’s see how these terms are related to each other.

What is DevOps?

DevOps is an evolution from agile methodology and is a software development approach that aims to break traditional silos that existed between cross-functional teams. The main aim of this methodology is to bring developers, IT operations, testers, and QA teams together. It is more like culture rather than a philosophy that fosters collaboration and communication between cross-functional teams.  The main of this methodology is to automate the process of software delivery by enabling CI/CD pipelines. DevOps lifecycle has the following phases – continuous development, continuous integration, continuous testing, continuous feedback, continuous monitoring, and continuous deployment/delivery.

What is continuous delivery?

Continuous delivery is an essential phase of the DevOps lifecycle. In this phase, teams ensure that after doing iterations in the software, the software can be delivered at any point of time. With this approach, teams ensure that every change in the system can be released or any version of the software can be released without any delay. With the help of continuous delivery, teams can deliver the product frequently, with less risk, and can achieve feedbacks from end-users constantly and continuously. This approach promotes the use of an automated deployment pipeline or CI/CD pipeline by which businesses can release reliable software quickly. The main aim of the continuous delivery phase is to speed up the time-to-market and to eliminate risks in the traditional software delivery process.

What is the relationship between DevOps and Continuous Delivery?
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The primary relation between DevOps and continuous delivery is that DevOps supports continuous delivery of the value chain. This is achieved by automating the CI/CD pipeline. Both of these approaches share common traits i.e. they follow aimed at agile and lean principles. Each of them works on iterations where small and quick changes are delivered; cross-functional teams collaborate and both of them work towards a common goal i.e. faster time to market.
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Automation plays a major role in DevOps and continuous delivery. By automating the DevOps process businesses can manage continuous delivery of software to end-users. The end-result of automating the DevOps process and CI/CD pipeline is faster delivery of high-quality software. 

Conclusion:
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To achieve faster and continuous delivery of high-quality software to end-users, businesses are rapidly adopting the DevOps methodology. Not only this methodology helps them to achieve faster time-to-market but also helps them to achieve improved collaboration between cross-functional teams such as developers, operations, testers, and QA teams. Leverage DevOps consulting from a next-gen QA and software testing services provider to achieve strategic DevOps implementation and faster time-to-market.

About the author: I am a technical content writer and I write articles on various IT-related topics. In this article, I have tried to share my views on what is DevOps and the relationship between DevOps and continuous delivery. 

Whenever there is a discussion about automation testing, the one tool that automatically comes to testers mind is selenium. The reason is simple, it is a free, open-source, fast, and reliable tool for automating tests for web applications. But just like other tools, there are certain challenges associated with this tool also, that makes automation testing quite challenging. Let’s try to understand some of these challenges in detail.

What is selenium automation testing?

Selenium automation testing is a software testing method where the selenium framework is used to automate the test. Selenium is an open-source test automation tool that enables developers to automate tests for web applications. Selenium is not just a single tool rather it is a suite of software that contains several components containing selenium IDE, selenium grid, and selenium WebDriver.

Selenium’s latest version is Selenium 4 Alpha 5. As per the latest version of this tool, several changes have been made to the components of the suite. Selenium WebDriver is now Selenium W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) standardization. Selenium Grid is now much improved. Also now Selenium IDE is updated to New Selenium 4 IDE (Chrome and Firefox).

What are the top challenges faced in selenium automation?
Let’s take a look at some of the major challenges of this framework:

Inability to handle pop windows and alerts

One of the challenges of this framework is its inability to record pop-ups which makes it difficult for developers to automate the process. Also, this framework is unable to handle windows based alerts. This framework can handle a web-based alert with the help of the switch to method.

Provides false positives and false negatives

Another common challenge with this tool is the problem of flaky tests. A flaky test is a situation where the tool provides false positive and false negative reports. When you are running hundreds or thousands of tests with the help of this tool, some chances are there that test results can come out successful, if it is not successful (false positive), or test result can come out negative even when it is not negative (false negative). This results in flaky tests and poses a great challenge in software testing.
 
Inability to switch browser windows

Another challenge with this framework is that it creates problem while multi-tab testing or cross-browser tests. Many developers believe that some elements of the web app work in one browser but not in other browsers.
 
Difficulty in handling dynamic content

Websites and web apps have dynamic web elements, which are not visible on the site when you visit it for the first time. Usually, the content of the web page varies from one visitor to another. This poses a great challenge to automation testing. But with the help of explicit wait command, this issue can be handled easily.
 
Inability to test mobile apps

One of the drawbacks of this tool is that it tests on web apps and websites. You cannot use this tool to automate tests for mobile apps. This makes the scope of this tool very limited. However one can use the Appium framework to test the content on the native mobile OS.

Conclusion:

Automation testing tools have helped testers all across the globe to save extended man-hours, reduce efforts required to test monotonous tasks, and eliminate human prone errors. One of the standard tools that come to every tester’s mind whenever we talk about automation testing is selenium. But some challenges are faced by testers while using this tool for test automation. Leverage automation testing from a next-gen QA and software testing services provider to achieve high-quality software.

About the author: I am a technical content writer and I write articles on various IT related topics. In this article, I have tried to share my views on the top challenges faced in selenium automation.

What are the limits of regression test automation?

As every testing method has its own pros and cons and similarly automated regression test also has some cons or we can say limits which makes it difficult for some organizations to automated their regression tests. 

A false sense of quality – Automation regression test provides a false sense of quality as the automated test scripts will only look for those bugs for which it is programmed and hence some defects may be overlooked or remain unseen. 

Lack of accuracy – Automation regression test can sometimes fail due to various factors such as bugs or error while running long test scripts which can give a false sense of accuracy. 

Low chances of finding new defects – Automation regression test follows the same pre-defined path, sometimes with the same set of test data. Hence the chances of finding new defects are low as no new path is followed while testing. 

Test cases require maintenance – The more test cases we automate the more test cases we require to maintain which further consumes more time and effort. Also if test cases are written too loosely they get passed in an automation test and if the test cases are written too rigidly they either fail and require to be updated every time a change is made which further requires more maintenance time and effort. 

Time consumed in deciding what to automate- Regression tests are run in reduced time cycles, often and repetitively to identify that new change in the software does not affect the existing functionality of the software. But it is very difficult and time-consuming to identify which test cases to automate and which test case to execute manually.
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Selecting the right automation regression test tool is not easy: Whenever we talk of automation regression testing tool the first tool that comes to our mind is the record and playback tool, but record and playback tools typically do not work well in automated regression tests as it involves a lot of rework. Also, there are various automation regression testing tools available but not every tool is best for every organization. Therefore many organizations find it difficult to identify right tool that caters to their requirements. 

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Conclusion: 
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Automated regression test has helped testers worldwide to save considerable testing efforts and time involved in running a manual regression test. Also in today’s agile environment, frequent changes are made in software which makes it more necessary to run a regression test every time a change is made to the software. Here automation regression testing tools play a major role in saving testing time, effort, and speeding up the testing process. 
Still, automated regression tests has some limitations such as a huge requirement for test case maintenance, lack of accuracy and reliability, the problem in finding the right testing tool, and several other that have been mentioned in this article that makes it difficult for organizations to fully rely on automation regression testing. 
Leverage end-to-end regression testing services by an independent next-gen software testing services provider to ensure that your software remains defect-free even after frequent changes.  

About the author:
I am a technical content writer and I write articles on various IT related topics. In this article, I have tried to share my views on the limits of regression test automation.

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