Automation has helped transform our societies and turn it into a free-thinking space. Gone are the days when businesses used to remain stuck on a similar kind of operation for the longest amount of time or delayed a release because people were still wrapping up manual work.
The point is that automation has changed the way businesses used to function or carry out their traditional operations. Now, we live in a world that is largely governed by data and every other organization is trying to jump onto this data to derive the maximum amounts of profits.
But, imagine if all this work was being done manually by several humans’ working day and night only to get one single insight. The fact is that by the time even if they did come up with something, the dynamics of the market would have changed by then and so would have the customer demands. Hence, all efforts turned into vain. Moreover, there is also a question of biases and mistakes crawling up onto something when done manually. Only if there was something that could help accomplishes tasks at rapid speeds. That’s where Automated Testing comes into play.
Test Automation in an Organization
You have a bright idea that is novel in nature and you think that it can change the way customers look at something. To turn this idea into a hardcore product, you build a team and get started with developmental work as soon as possible. You’re using cutting edge technologies and making sure that everything is going as per the plan. Development takes time and it’s done. Now all that’s left to do is to get your application tested before it is delivered to the customer or released in the market.
Software testing, even though it lies at the end of the software development life cycle is one of the most important parts of it. Without it, there is no concept of perfection or efficiency in your application. Not only this but it’s obvious that you do not want your customers to find bugs in the application or something that crashes and again and again when used.
Most organizations these days have started implementing automation in their testing pipeline for a variety of reasons. Not only does it ensure greater accuracy but it also makes sure that the process is well speed up and helps deliver the product at the right time to the customer. Organizations and enterprises these days want agile practices to their software testing, which is why they utilize some of the tools out there that help them test their application and identify bugs that would’ve been impossible through the naked eye.
But apart from automation testing that started making its way into the pipeline in an organization, there was something else topping it off. Software testing, when combined with automation, helped generate test cases in the best possible way. But the underlying question is what was measuring the authenticity and goodness of these test cases. That’s when test automation came into the picture. Since then, it has not just become an important part of the testing pipeline but also an enterprise as a whole.
Leadership and Test Automation
Now the question arises that why is leadership an important aspect of test automation. The point is that ideas like test automation demand highly agile environments to function, this is also what today’s enterprises and organizations want. But to develop such a culture or an agile environment, efforts from not only the technological end but also from the workforce of an organization is required.
A model quintessentially works well in a new environment when it is backed by the support of tens or hundreds of smart people who are doing things they’ve never done before in their lives with tools, they are not familiar with. These people make hundreds of decisions in a day and turn ideas and concepts into pieces of code that implement it flawlessly. This is where the role of leadership comes into play.
Coming to software testing, there has been one of the biggest gaps between the development and productive use of application software. The way organizations bridge this is what decides their success or failure in the market. And primarily this is what DevOps does. If you look at the leadership perspective, the approach is simple. Leaders, no matter at which level they are must focus on three pillars- rigor, alignment, and efficiency. This ensures that all good decisions are well backed by data, the entire workforce of the organization is moving forward and putting their efforts into similar goals, and everyone’s valuable time is respected.
In accomplishing these goals, leaders are often posed with another important question- the question of cost in the application development process. It all comes down to ensuring that the evolved software is ready to be deployed for production without taking up a lot of costs. The answer to this can be only found out by witnessing the examples of great leadership in an organization.
The first and foremost step of the way lies in setting the targets and laying out a clear vision of business benefits and their supports for the initiative. Once the target is set, organizations need to make sure that adequate leadership and technical skills are in place. Then comes the aspect of defining the technical architecture carefully because it is the foundation stone of the entire process. One of the most important aspects of test automation comes from the process of incremental deliveries constant work is made at all levels coherently. This is the creative period but once this ends, all the hardcore and efficiently performing ides must be improved.
Conclusion
Most organizations make this mistake of looking at test automation from a perspective of tools and processes. They quickly integrate DevOps and expect things to magically happen to their testing pipeline. But, what they forget in the process is that it is always the leadership role that comes into play and decides the fate of the organization and the product it is building.
