Every single time that you see a company website or application, or any (typically digital) tool that’s aimed at solving problems or making decisions for the company goes through several stages of testing before setting up and is consistently tested even after setting up.
These are known as enterprise tests.
These tests need to be reliable, accurate, and fast. This is why manually testing every single process of every application might not be viable for most enterprises.
If you are keeping up with the technological advances that the world is going through, you would also know that our latest hobby as humans is to automate anything that we do not necessarily wish to do, especially the ones that need to be done again and again.
The enterprise tests that we run manually are vulnerable to biases, judgment and execution errors, misinterpretation of data and feedback, and sheer waste of human energy on continuous tasks. This is why enterprise test automation is vital and is called for these days.
But enterprise test automation is not the easiest thing to do. It comes with its own challenges.
Here are the top-5 challenges involved in enterprise test automation:
1.Sustainable automation requires time and resources
Probably because of the overshadowing idea that automation makes things easier, people often underestimate the cost of it. For any test automation to give sustainable results, it needs a lot of time, effort, and consistent maintenance. From determining the task to automating it, there’s a lot that needs to get done – setting a framework for a sound data-driven testing process, maintaining compatibility as the application evolves, and consistently putting in the effort till you can finally be sure that the testing process is reliably formed.
2.IT infrastructure and requirements do not align
Too many times the business leaders, technology professionals, and the IT infrastructure at hand do not align to meet the automation strategy. Most business leaders do not give the required attention to the complexities due to a lack of awareness. In a desperate attempt to make up for their investment, they tend to overlook the importance of professional and strategic assistance to the process.
3.Bots and their limitations
Efficiency is getting more done in less – less time, less cost, and more productivity. As respectable as this aspiration is, bots, like humans, break down and malfunction when they are over-assigned with tasks. When bots make more decisions and carry more applications in the early days of implementation, they tend to fall short and become counterproductive towards ROI. This is often done in an effort to avoid having to build more bots and bring in more analytical software. This adds another layer to the complications involved in enterprise test automation.
4.High chance of inaccurate tests
It takes multiple runs of experimentation and testing before one can depend on an AI-bot to do its job right with dependable accuracy. There is a very high chance of multiple false positives and it is really difficult to predict when you have arrived at an accurate test result, especially with the assistance of a professional. Business leaders or even IT professionals make the rookie mistake of overlooking the false positives and in a way losing track of their progress in the automation journey.
5.As complex as capable
The complexity of test automation depends on the software or process to be automated in the first place. The more business-critical the process is, the more accurate and complex the test needs to be. The complex the test, the more learning the tests will undergo. The process of enterprise test automation requires ardent care and manual monitoring.
However avoidable these mistakes may seem, automation is an extremely complex process. Sure, it is known to bring ease into human life and enterprise processes but we reach that stage after multiple failed attempts, persistent efforts, professional assistance, and fairly generous investments.
The best way to get really close to a successful implementation of enterprise automation is to be strategic, calculative, open-minded, and preventive of predictable challenges in the process.