How to Facilitate QA in Software with Test Automation

The pandemic has given businesses an opportunity to reassess how they develop and test software. With new technologies and tools, extra market pressure, and constantly changing consumer demand, one thing is certain - Quality Assurance (QA) remains an essential element in the delivery of high-quality software. 

In this article, we’ll briefly cover what’s required for businesses to deliver high-quality software. As Capgemini states in their ‘22 World Quality Report, high-quality software requires promoting a quality mindset, securing executive support, and fostering a culture of adaptability and agility to become successful. We will examine the QA element - how poor testing practices and toolsets can reduce the quality of software deliveries, while best practices can ensure quality.

To achieve quality at speed, businesses have to test efficiently. Test automation will help them get there, but it requires careful consideration of the chosen test automation solution. 

In short, effective test automation requires a team with the right skillset. The overriding challenge is that agile teams are lacking professional test expertise, partly because of the blurring boundaries between software development and testing. However, with the adoption of no-code test automation solutions, this challenge can be overcome.

What’s stopping businesses from delivering high-quality software?

High-quality software requires more QA support, however, testing teams are short-staffed which has led to a reliance on non-technical users to carry out testing. 

Teams are aware of the fact that they need to automate in order to achieve quality at speed, however, most have only tried coded options for test automation. This puts the quality of software at risk as the automation tools available are not aligned with most testers and business uses technical experience (or lack thereof).

This limits the effective use of QA resources and prevents scaling because code-based and highly technical automation tools are hard to onboard, adopt, and maintain due to the lack of code-capable testers and business users.

Code-based test automation results in a waste of resources and becomes cost-intensive. This makes QA and product verification slow and difficult, creating difficulties in communication between development and testing teams. 

Capgemini highlights it well. “Automating a single flow may not be a technical challenge anymore, but running hundreds of thousands of tests is a challenge in itself”, especially when it is code-based.

But test automation doesn’t have to be a technical challenge. There are solutions available that facilitate better collaboration and better product verifications for quality at speed.  

How businesses can improve quality in testing with Leapwork

For businesses to improve the quality of their software (no matter the industry), the approach to QA has to be thorough and able to keep pace with development. This requires adopting a test automation tool that non-developers and QA personnel can easily learn, build, maintain and scale. 

That’s where Leapwork comes in. 

Leapwork is a no-code test automation tool that enables business users and QA managers to build automation, all with the same visual language. The visual language enables businesses to easily build, scale and maintain automation. This gives teams working on testing and development the freedom to do more with less so they can focus on strategic initiatives.    

Some of Leapwork’s capabilities include:

• A visual language with no-code. A visual language that everyone can understand, with Leapwork’s visual approach to automation over text and code. Our simple way to visualize the creation and maintenance of tests, troubleshooting, and business processes means you can resolve bugs quicker before they even make it to your customers. 
• Excellent customer experience. From onboarding to ongoing support, we ensure your testers get up and running with test automation quickly. Our success team is highly skilled automation specialists with backgrounds in testing and test automation, helping us to quickly react to and resolve your issues. 
• Easy build, maintenance, scale. Everyone in QA can collaborate and contribute to tests by leveraging the only truly visual approach to test automation. Testers can take charge of maintenance, regardless of their technical experience. 

Want to learn more about how you can facilitate QA in test automation? Join our on-demand webinar on developing a successful test automation strategy that can improve QA efforts long term.