Test automation is a very important process in the software development life cycle. The field of automation testing is rapidly growing.
However, with the rapidly growing software development methodologies and environments, it becomes difficult to manually test everything for an application within a limited time, along with cost constraints. This is due to the various advantages of automating your software application development process. It helps to reduce human efforts by increasing testing efficiency and performing various types of automation testing in less time than manual testing.
Thus, automation testing has become a major topic in the software development life cycle. When you prepare for any automation testing interview, most candidates focus on specific automation testing tools. But there is a lot more to learn and be prepared for. In this article, you will see some of the best and most frequently asked automation testing interview questions that will help you make an optimized interview preparation.
Top Automation Testing Interview Questions
Let us see the top automation testing interview questions.
What is Automation Testing?
Automation testing is a software testing concept in which the testing team runs the tests programmatically to check the various aspects of the website or software application, such as features and functionality, compatibility, etc., using the various automated tools and frameworks instead of manually testing each case one after one. Automation testing involves little human involvement, increasing testing efficiency by saving time and human effort and increasing the testing scope and speed.
How is Automated Testing Different from Manual Testing?
Automated testing requires very little or sometimes no human intervention to control and execute the testing process, while humans do manual testing. Automated testing is less prone to human errors as no humans are involved. Automated testing is faster than manual testing. Automated testing allows test reusability, which is impossible in manual testing because you need to write the tests each time manually. Automated testing is more accurate as compared to manual testing. Also, automated testing requires much less maintenance as compared to manual testing.
When Do You Think You Need to Automate Testing?
You can automate the tests in various scenarios, such as:
- When you need to repeat the tests many times.
- When tested, the feature’s behavior does not change regularly.
- When it is taking too much time for human testing or manual testing.
- There are complex calculations and computations in your testing.
- The test confirms that the new change did not break the previous functionality.
Describe The Factors for choosing Automation Testing Framework
Automation testing is done by using various automation tools and frameworks. These are the essential parts of the automation testing. Different parameters should be considered while choosing these tools and frameworks, but given below are some pointers.
- Choose tools that do not require much coding because the tools that require less coding are considered good automation testing tools. Some tools necessitate programming knowledge, while others do not, allowing a non-coder tester to generate test cases with visual aids.
- There are so many tools available, but try to choose the tool that is cost-effective and functional. Keep in mind the ratio between price and features that they provide.
- A good automation testing tool must have an easy user interface. Some automated testing solutions are notoriously difficult to use and require substantial training before providing any value.
What is the Test Automation Pyramid?
The test automation pyramid was developed by Martin Fowler in 2012. The test automation pyramid is an important concept that all software developers should be familiar with. It’s a framework that can help the development team produce a higher-quality product. Using the test automation pyramid for your automation testing helps to reduce the testing time and allows the QA team to check if they introduced breaking changes.
Explain the Basic Types of Manual Testing
Manual testing consists of three types: Ad hoc testing, Exploratory testing, and Usability testing.
- Ad hoc testing is a type of manual testing that is not planned. It is an unplanned and spontaneous testing approach. The testing and QA teams perform software testing without any planned strategy in this testing type. The testing team executes all based on guesses and current testing experience.
- Exploratory testing is another type of manual testing approach. This testing type emphasizes spontaneity, and exploratory testing is more systematic than ad hoc testing. The objective of exploratory testing is to focus on learning and software investigation while doing other testing activities simultaneously, such as designing and executing the test cases for software testing.
- The next is usability testing. Usability testing is the process in which the team focuses on the user experience side. It includes testing for various aspects such as user accessibility, ease of use, UI/UX (user interface and user experience), etc. The team must put themselves into the scenarios and think they are using the software. What are their expectations for that specific software application, their desired user interface, ease of use, etc? This helps them to make the best possible software application according to their usability.
Explain the Different Parts of the Test Automation Framework
The different parts of the automation testing framework are as follows:
- IDE: The basic and important part of running your automation testing. You can choose your preferred IDE, such as IntelliJ or Eclipse. Keep in mind that it should be compatible with your preferred programming language.
- Browser drivers: The browser driver is the key to receiving the HTTP requests from the JSON Wire Protocol through its HTTP server and sends the processed requests to the real browser.
- Test Design Patterns: Design patterns are reusable solutions that can be reused for problems that frequently arise in software design. They act as a common vocabulary and a shared understanding of best practices among the testing and QA team. Some popular design patterns are POM (page object model), Fluent, etc.
- Test Libraries Functions: It is used to create the different utilities that can be used to ease the test writing script, such as Selenium, JUnit, TestNG, Playwright, Appium, and Rest Assured.
- Some basic coding standards such as KISS, DRY, etc.
- Test reports and logs to monitor your whole testing process and find any kind of defects easily to rectify them at the development stage only.
What is Cloud-Based Automation Testing?
Cloud-based automation testing executes the test scripts for your website or software application using cloud-based tools and utilities. Performing cloud automation testing has many advantages over other testing approaches, such as providing better testing efficiency in less time and with less human input.
Highlight the Various Advantages of Cloud Automation Testing
The various benefits of cloud-based automation testing are as follows:
- In technology, scalability is a gauge to assess how well a system or network copes with an upsurge in users, devices, data points, or transactions. Meanwhile, reliability denotes the likelihood of a product, system, or service effectively fulfilling its designated purpose over a specific duration without glitches.
- When evaluating cost-effectiveness, one must weigh the expenses incurred during the testing phase against the outcomes achieved to determine if they meet the desired standards. Furthermore, cloud automation testing stands out for its low maintenance requirements since this responsibility falls on the shoulders of the cloud provider.
- An additional advantage of utilizing cloud services is enhanced collaboration opportunities. Thanks to its widespread online accessibility, working in tandem with development and testing teams becomes significantly smoother and more efficient.
Moreover, you can use cloud testing platforms like LambdaTest for scaling up automation testing. LambdaTest is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform to run manual and automated tests at scale. The platform allows you to perform real-time and automation testing across 3000+ environments and real mobile devices.
What is a Test Environment?
A test environment is an interface that integrates software, hardware, and network things. A test environment is where the testing teams analyze the quality of the application/program. In it, the testing team installs the new software it creates with all its dependencies. It helps to simulate the production environment.
What is Browser Automation?
Browser automation is the process of testing software in a web browser using automated tools and solutions. Browser automation helps decrease testing efforts and focuses on delivering fast results.
Explain Regression Testing
Regression testing is software testing in which the testing team reruns all the functional and non-functional tests. Running these tests ensures that a software application works correctly without any malfunctioning. All the features and functionalities work properly in all the targeted browsers and devices. Regression testing ensures that the new updates will not bring any potential bugs to your software application.
Give a Brief About the Various Types of Automation Testing Used in the Software Industry.
The various types of automation tests are as follows:
- Unit Testing
- GUI Testing
- Functional Testing
- Smoke Testing
- Regression Testing
What are the Various Factors that Maps the Success of Automation Testing?
Successful automation should have the following factors:
- It should be time-saving.
- The tests should be reusable so that no rewrite of tests is required.
- The software quality should be good and performance-effective.
- There should be few or no errors and bugs found during the development process.
- The software test coverage should be high.
What are the Various Factors That Should be Considered While Selecting the Appropriate Automation Testing Tool?
The factors are :
- First, you need to understand the project requirements.
- Search and do a brief research about the available tools according to your project and check whether they align with your requirements.
- Use cloud-based automation testing tools.
- Budget is another factor which should be highly considered. If you invest so much in buying a tool and the project is not that big, your overall output will be at a loss.
Name Some of the Most Popular Automation Testing Tools
There are various tools and frameworks available in the market for automation testing. When you are thinking of browser automation testing, then Selenium is the most popular and recommended tool. For applications, you can go with Appium, SoapUI, Ranorex, etc.
Give a Brief Overview of the Selenium Tool.
Selenium is an open-source automation testing tool for website testing. It is used to perform cross-browser testing. It has various advantages over other website testing tools, such as language and multi-platform support. Selenium enables you to test and operate your web application across various browsers, including Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and more.
Conclusion
In this article, you have gone through the various automation testing interview questions that should be prepared. Instead of focusing on only automation testing tools, there are many more topics in this domain that should be covered by the interview candidate.
