"Automation testing is constantly being preferred by many enterprises for many reasons such as to deploy efficient applications at less time, to identify and resolve the bugs at the earliest stage, to enhance the cost savings, etc. But, in order to scale all these benefits, enterprises have to understand how automation works and why it fails. The practice of test automation on projects can be successful only when it is performed with the right tools, by approaching the realistic scenarios and with the right mind-set. By understanding the reasons why automation fails will help enterprises to avoid such scenarios and make automation successful."

In this modern era, faster developments with quality-assurance are important requirements for most of the enterprises. Automation testing tools are the choice for many enterprises to make their deployments easier and faster. A successful methodology with these test automation tools will help the teams to be successful in their project requirements. But, do you know, there are a plethora of challenges that have to be overcome for achieving flawless automation testing.

There are several challenges such as the need of scripting skills, lack of testers, not using the right automation tool, etc. Overcoming every such challenge will help enterprises to mitigate the failures and achieve success in automation testing project. However, below find a few reasons which are essential for enterprises to know to avoid the failures in automation projects.

Reasons Why Automation Testing Projects Fail

1. Improper Selection of the tool:

There are a number of tools available in the market to perform test automation. A few are paid tools and others are open-source tools. Among this huge list, enterprises have to choose the best one that can improve the overall testing procedure. The teams should opt for a tool that can fulfill the testing needs, help in achieving the real requirements with its special capabilities, and meet its expenditure.

2. Ignoring compile-time and run-time errors:

While practicing test automation, it is essential for the teams to resolve the errors as and when they are approached. For any test script, compile-time and run-time errors are common to be experienced, if they are ignored they can cause trouble to the project. Hence, the teams have to resolve these errors in order to prevent hurdles.

3. Improper Execution of test scripts:

A web application is a mixture of several test automation scripts. If any test script is failed to execute properly, then it can trigger more issues while executing other test scripts. Hence, it is essential for the teams to validate whether every test script is executed properly.

4. Lack of knowledge to begin automation:

This is one of the most common issues in every enterprise. There is a need for having perfect planning to begin automation and understand where it has to be performed on priority. Performing automation to check the rendering issues or locating elements on a page is not a good choice to begin with. Also, it’s not a good choice to test the elements that are prone to changes. Hence, to begin automation it is good to test elements that are stable and may require repeated tests.

5. Completely opting for 100% automation:

When planning for test automation, most of the teams plan to automate everything. Though this sounds good, this isn’t possible, there is a mandatory need where human intervention is needed such as performing accessibility testing for web applications, etc. Teams have to understand that testing involves both manual testing and automation testing.

6. Lack of skilled resource:

To achieve the best results with test automation, it is essential to have expert teams who have sufficient knowledge in automation and help in saving time. Also, it is important for the test engineers to have the skills to ease the test automation with the selected tool. This will help in kick-starting the automation testing projects.
The other best option that is widely preferred by many enterprises is outsourcing testing services from expert QA specialists.

Conclusion:

Test Automation is an interesting and challenging practice for many enterprises. The abundant benefits even influence many of them to choose automation for their projects. But, an improper understanding to perform test automation can make many teams face several challenges and even fail the test automation projects. The above-mentioned are a few reasons which enterprises have to avoid for flawless automation in testing.

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