The shift from manual to automated testing has transformed software development. Manual testing, once the norm, was time-consuming and error-prone. As software has grown more detailed and complex, automated testing tools have emerged, enabling faster and more accurate testing through scripts. It has now got to the point that if you are not using automated testing tools (such as T-Plan), you are wasting time, wasting money and ultimately, falling behind.
In this article we’re going to talk specifically about automated functional testing – what it is, what it does, why you need to be using it, what challenges you might fall into, and ultimately, why you should be using T-Plan Robot to handle your automated functional testing needs.
Table of Contents
What is Automated Functional Testing?
In this industry there are many concepts and practices that are referred to by a number of different things. Automated functional testing is one of them – sometimes it’s referred to as system testing, GUI testing, acceptance testing, black-box testing – fundamentally, however, these are all different types of automated functional testing. This involves using specialised tools that automatically execute test cases that validate whether a software application performs its intended functions correctly. Unlike manual testing, which involves a user sat at a computer running tests and checking results, automated testing relies on scripts and tools to perform these tasks repeatedly and consistently, leading to higher quality and more consistent output.
A great example of a real-world automated test would be testing a login page on a website – you might use a framework such as Selenium for this, coding in an automated test to open the browser, navigating to the website’s login page and inputting both valid and invalid usernames and passwords to see whether the website behaves as expected. Automated tests will simulate these user interactions and then provide reports for what happened in several different cases, allowing developers to identify which cases resulted in unexpected behaviour and then resolving them accordingly.
This type of testing is essential in the software development lifecycle for a variety of reasons – it ensures the software remains reliable and efficient by identifying and addressing defects early in the development process. Automated functional testing can also integrate with Agile and DevOps environments where rapid development cycles demand quick feedback. Automating the repetitive and time-consuming aspects of your testing allows your team to focus on more complex and exploratory testing tasks, reducing your time to market and enhancing user satisfaction.
Types of Automated Functional Testing
Automated functional testing as a concept covers many different test scenarios, supports various environments and is cost-effective long-term as it minimised manual efforts. However, there are a few different types of automated functional testing, and each applies in different situations and tests for different things, which we explain below.
Smoke Testing
Smoke testing is also known as “build verification testing” and is a preliminary test to check the basic functionality of an application. Smoke testing is effectively a gatekeeper, which determines whether a build is stable enough to proceed with further testing. By running a minimal set of tests, smoke testing ensures the critical functions of the application function correctly before more exhaustive testing is performed. The primary use cases for smoke testing include verifying new software builds, ensuring basic functionality after major updates, and checking initial integrations of new modules. It is particularly useful in agile development environments where rapid and frequent builds are common. Smoke testing is often used as the first step in the testing process to identify any immediate and glaring issues that could impede further testing. Smoke testing is an extremely useful tool to have in your arsenal because immediate validation of core functionality helps you save time and resources by preventing wasted effort on unstable builds. However, smoke testing offers limited coverage, focusing only on the most basic functionalities, and can miss deeper issues that require more detailed testing. While it provides a quick check, it may overlook significant bugs that need comprehensive testing to uncover.
Regression Testing
Regression testing ensures recent code changes have not adversely affected existing functionalities. It involves re-running previously executed test cases to verify that the software continues to perform correctly after updates, bug fixes, or new feature additions. This testing is essential for maintaining software stability and reliability. Commonly used after bug fixes and new feature additions, regression testing is crucial in CI/CD environments with frequent code changes. It helps ensure that software remains stable and that recent changes do not disrupt any part of the application. Without robust regression testing you may find yourself discovering bugs that are several builds old and having to go back and unpick code changes to test and resolve issues. Regression testing helps with maintaining software stability, providing confidence in changes, and ensuring comprehensive verification of features. However, regression testing can be resource-intensive and time-consuming, requiring extensive test suites that need regular updates. Despite these challenges, it is vital for delivering high-quality, reliable software.
Integration Testing
Integration testing examines the interactions between integrated units or components to ensure they work together as intended. It verifies the interfaces and data flow between modules, typically following unit testing. This type of testing is essential for identifying issues in the interaction of different components within complex systems. Integration testing is used after unit testing to validate module interactions, in systems with multiple interdependent components, and for ensuring compatibility with third-party services or APIs. It is crucial for detecting interface defects and ensuring the seamless functioning of integrated parts. The benefits include identifying interface issues early, confirming cohesive functionality, and improving overall system reliability. However, integration testing can be complex to set up and maintain, requiring a thorough understanding of system architecture. While it catches interaction issues, it assumes that individual units have already been tested, potentially missing isolated unit defects. Despite this, it is vital for ensuring that different parts of the system work together correctly.
Unit Testing
Unit testing involves testing individual components or units of software in isolation to ensure they perform as expected. Typically the first level of testing during development, unit tests target specific functions, methods, or classes, verifying their correctness. Unit testing is used during the development phase to catch bugs early, during code refactoring to maintain functionality, and for testing standalone libraries or APIs. It helps in identifying issues at an early stage, simplifies debugging, and promotes better software architecture. However, unit testing has a narrow scope, focusing only on small parts of the application and potentially missing system-level issues. It also requires maintenance as code evolves and does not account for interactions between units.
End-to-End Testing
End-to-end (E2E) testing evaluates the complete application flow, simulating real user scenarios from start to finish. It ensures that all integrated components function together as expected in a production-like environment, covering the entire system. E2E testing is used to validate user workflows, such as purchasing processes, before major releases, and for testing complex interactions across multiple components or systems. It provides comprehensive coverage and tests the application from a user’s perspective, ensuring real-world reliability. However, E2E testing is time-consuming, resource-intensive, and complex to set up, requiring a realistic testing environment and detailed scenarios. Despite this, end to end testing is crucial for ensuring overall system integrity and user satisfaction.
Sanity Testing
Sanity testing, a subset of regression testing, focuses on verifying specific functionalities after minor changes to ensure they work correctly. It involves quick, surface-level tests to confirm that certain functions or bug fixes operate as intended without delving into deeper testing. Sanity testing is used after minor updates or bug fixes and for quick validations during ongoing development. It ensures that recent changes have not introduced new defects and that the affected areas function properly. The benefits include rapid feedback and focused testing on critical areas. However, sanity testing has limited scope and may miss broader issues introduced by changes. Despite this, it is valuable for quick verification of recent changes.
Automated Functional Testing in Modern Workflows
Automated functional testing is a key part of modern development methodologies – the two most prominent being Agile and DevOps. The iterative approach to Agile development allows teams to adapt to changes and improve continuously – but this isn’t possible without some kind of automated testing to ensure each iteration meets quality standards. Additionally, a core aspect of DevOps are continuous deployment pipelines, which require constant testing to validate every single code change. But how specifically does automated functional testing fit into these development workflows?
Automated functional testing with Agile
Automated functional testing is a perfect fit for agile development. During agile sprints, automated tests provide quick feedback, essential for maintaining the rapid pace of development. By integrating test planning and execution into every sprint phase—planning, execution, and review—teams can quickly identify and fix issues, ensuring continuous progress. Tools like JIRA, Selenium, and T-Plan make this integration smoother, enhancing productivity and quality. Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) further aligns testing with business goals, using frameworks like Cucumber to create tests based on user stories and requirements. BDD promotes collaboration by making test cases readable and understandable for everyone, from developers to business stakeholders, improving communication and ensuring the product meets user needs.
Automated functional testing with DevOps
In the DevOps world, automated functional testing is crucial for CI/CD pipelines, ensuring continuous integration and deployment. Automated tests are integrated at various stages of the CI/CD pipeline, providing rapid feedback on each code change. Tools like Jenkins and Travis CI automate these tests, making integration and execution seamless. This integration helps catch issues early, facilitating continuous deployment without compromising quality. Automated testing also fosters a collaborative DevOps culture by promoting shared responsibility between development and operations teams. It ensures transparency and visibility into the testing process, allowing everyone to monitor progress and understand the state of the application. Case studies show how automated testing reduces bottlenecks and improves communication, making teams more efficient. Practices like regular cross-functional meetings and integrated dashboards further enhance collaboration, ensuring continuous improvement and high-quality software.
Tools and Technologies
With modern development practices necessitating rapid and continuous testing, selecting the appropriate tools can significantly impact the development process. By understanding these tools and technologies, teams can make informed decisions that align with their project needs and enhance their testing strategies. But what’s most appropriate for your use case?
Popular Tools
Selenium
Selenium is an open-source tool for automating web browsers, supporting multiple programming languages like Java, C#, and Python, and running on various browsers and operating systems. Its pros include extensive language and browser support, a large community, and robust documentation. However, it has a complex setup, slower execution for large test suites, and is limited to web applications. Detailed comparisons show Selenium’s strengths in browser compatibility and language support but highlight performance drawbacks in large-scale applications.
While Selenium is exceptionally powerful, you may actually prefer to use a third-party service like T-Plan which effectively wraps Selenium into a GUI-based suite of tests that requires very little coding knowledge to execute. This can often be the quickest and most comprehensive way of performing a huge variety of tests on your application using Selenium. We offer a free demo of T-Plan, which you can check out using the link below.
Appium
Appium is an open-source tool for automating mobile applications on Android and iOS platforms, using the WebDriver protocol. It supports multiple programming languages and can test native, hybrid, and mobile web applications. Pros include cross-platform support and no need for application source code, but it can be slower, has a complex setup, and requires maintaining different environments. Integration with CI/CD pipelines can also be seamless, making it ideal for modern development methodologies.
JUnit
JUnit is a widely-used testing framework for Java applications, primarily for unit testing but extendable for integration and functional testing. It is simple, easy to use, integrates well with Java environments, and has strong community support. Its limitations include being specific to Java applications and not being suitable for large-scale integration or end-to-end testing on its own. JUnit’s practical insights include its use in TDD (Test-Driven Development) environments, ensuring robust code quality from the outset of development.
Cypress
Cypress is a modern, open-source testing tool for the web, providing a fast, easy, and reliable experience. Its pros are real-time reloads, automatic waiting, easy debugging, detailed documentation, and built-in retry-ability. However, it is limited to JavaScript, has a relatively small community, and offers less cross-browser testing support compared to Selenium. A tech startup’s case study highlights Cypress’s real-time testing capabilities, significantly reducing their debug cycle.
Playwright
Playwright is an open-source automation library developed by Microsoft for web testing, supporting multiple languages and handling modern web applications across browsers. It offers cross-browser support, fast execution, and handles modern web features well. Its cons include being a newer tool with a smaller community and evolving documentation, with potentially fewer integrations compared to older tools. Playwright’s integration with CI/CD is exemplified by a SaaS company’s case study, showing how it streamlined their release cycles.
Emerging Technologies
AI in Testing
AI and machine learning are transforming automated functional testing through predictive analytics and self-healing tests. These technologies can identify test cases, generate scripts, and predict failure areas automatically, enhancing efficiency, reducing maintenance, and improving accuracy. Challenges include significant initial setup, the need for expertise, and continuous learning curves. Future trends indicate AI’s growing role in making testing smarter and more adaptive, with examples of AI tools predicting and preventing potential failures before they occur.
Visual Testing
Visual testing tools like Applitools use advanced image processing algorithms to ensure UI correctness by comparing the application’s visual appearance against a baseline. Benefits include ensuring UI consistency, catching visual defects traditional methods might miss, and integrating well with CI/CD pipelines. Challenges involve sensitivity to minor changes, frequent updates to visual baselines, and potentially higher costs for advanced tools. Again – one of the main features of T-Plan is its image-based testing suite – which we will demonstrate to you for free if you register your interest using the link below.
Challenges and Solutions
Of course, as with anything, several challenges can hinder the effectiveness and efficiency of your testing processes. We’ve combined some of the most common pitfalls and challenges that development teams face when trying to perform automated functional testing, as well as easy ways to mitigate these issues.
Handling Dynamic Elements
Dynamic elements, which change frequently during runtime, can pose significant challenges for automated testing and can result in flaky or unstable testing. For example, a dynamic element might include a modal popup or a dropdown menu which changes its state or content based on user interaction or real-time data updates. These elements can appear, disappear, move or change attributes – which can pose real challenges when your goal is stable and impactful test results. Fortunately there are ways to deal with this:
Using Dynamic Locators
Implementing dynamic locators like XPath, CSS selectors, or using ID attributes that change based on conditions can help in reliably identifying elements.
Explicit and Implicit Waits
Utilizing waits to manage timing issues and ensure elements are available before interaction. Tools like Selenium WebDriver (in both raw format and wrapped within T-Plan Robot) offer methods for setting explicit waits for specific conditions or implicit waits for general element availability.
AI-Powered Tools
Leveraging AI-based testing tools that can adapt to changes in the UI and self-heal test scripts. Tools like Testim and Applitools Eyes use machine learning to handle dynamic elements more effectively.
Balancing Automation and Manual Testing
While automated testing enhances efficiency, some scenarios require manual testing to ensure comprehensive coverage. Balancing both approaches is essential:
Hybrid Testing Approach
Combining automated tests for repetitive, high-volume tasks and manual tests for exploratory, usability, and ad-hoc testing. This approach ensures thorough testing without compromising efficiency.
Human Oversight
Incorporating human judgment to review automated test results and verify complex scenarios that automation might miss. Manual testers can provide insights into user experience and identify subtle issues.
Tool Integration
Using tools that support both automated and manual testing within a unified framework. Tools like TestRail and Zephyr enable seamless management of both testing types, enhancing collaboration and visibility.
Regular Audits
Conducting regular audits of automated test cases to ensure they remain relevant and effective, and adjusting the balance between automated and manual testing based on project needs.
Additional Challenges
Apart from handling dynamic elements and balancing automation with manual testing, other significant challenges include device/OS fragmentation, network variability, and resource constraints:
Device/OS Fragmentation
Testing across a wide range of devices and operating systems is challenging. This is where you should be using T-Plan to help simulate, emulate, and virtualize a range of devices to ensure maximum compatibility. Virtual machines and emulators can also replicate different environments for comprehensive testing.
Network Variability
Employ network simulation tools such as Network Link Conditioner or Charles Proxy to mimic different network conditions. Incorporate performance tests that simulate varying network speeds and latencies to identify potential bottlenecks.
Resource Constraints
Prioritize testing high-risk areas and critical functionalities first. Optimize test automation to minimize redundancy and execution time, and consider outsourcing or collaborating with external services to supplement your testing resources.
In summary
Automated functional testing is essential for modern software development. It ensures software reliability and efficiency by automating repetitive tasks, allowing quicker feedback and reducing human error. This type of testing integrates seamlessly with agile and DevOps practices, supporting continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines for rapid development cycles. Your business will benefit from automated functional testing through improved software quality, faster time-to-market, and enhanced user satisfaction. Automated testing covers various test scenarios, supports different environments, and is cost-effective in the long run by minimizing manual efforts. Also, it allows development teams to focus on complex and exploratory testing tasks, ensuring comprehensive coverage and better overall application performance.
And of course – you should be using T-Plan for your automated functional testing – which you can check out a free demo of using the link below.
