Every successful software release goes in pair with QA testing. It's an integral part of any development cycle that helps to find and fix all the critical software defects. 

However, when a product gets mature expanding its functionality, there are more integrations and dependencies. Thus, it calls for expanded test coverage resulting in more tasks for your QA team. If the manual testing practice is the only method that is used, the workload may significantly increase. That's why along with growing the product, it's worth considering automation techniques on the project. 

So how to use automated testing techniques to receive quicker test results?

Arm your team with the tools 

It's not a secret that the right tools help to get most from the automation. Depending on your needs, it's possible to choose the solution for any purpose including test management, functional testing (like API and Unit testing), and checking the application performance. If there was no automation on the project before, choosing free options is a great option to try. With tools like TestProject's website automation testing, it's easier and takes less time to properly arrange multi-device and browser tests.

Start early testing

Another way to speed up receiving the results from automation testing is involving QA testing as soon as the project starts. This practice is also known as "shift left movement". Even when there's only one feature developed, and a fully-fledged application is yet to come. Testing in the early stages will help to detect defects earlier reducing the costs for their fixes. Writing automated scripts from day one helps to gradually extend the test coverage along with growing the application functionality. In the end result, the further steps, like regression testing are easier to perform when all the parts are tested from the beginning.

Learn the solution you are testing 

It's always advisable that quality assurance engineers get familiar with the technologies used to build the software they are testing. This defines the choice of testing platform and facilitates compiling the test scenario. Understanding the expected behavior in practice makes the results obtained from the test much easier to interpret. As a result, you can properly compile the bug report rather than just following the documentation requirements when writing tests.

ML and AI enhancements

Artificial intelligence and Machine learning can take the QA process to a completely new level. Incorporating AI in automated testing reduces the time required for testing scripts maintenance, updates. It's even possible to train the algorithms to write their own tests.

When it comes to practical application, ML algorithms can speed up test case troubleshooting. In case a test fails, the trained algorithm can restructure the sequence of events to spot the faulty code, even if it triggers an error at a different stage of interaction with the tested component.

Today, companies like Facebook widely apply AI in their testing process. But it's not only big tech giants who can enjoy AI benefits. Nowadays, the trend of applying ML algorithms is widely used in QA automation tools. 

Wrap-Up

Implementing automation techniques into an existing development project requires thorough planning and involving experts to make sure everything is done correctly. In the beginning though it may take a bit higher time and money investments than for manual testing, but the reward from it is much higher. 

Automation helps to minimize involvement of your personnel in routine tasks. Manual forms input, checking behavior on multiple browsers, platforms, and screen resolution are just to name a few. Delegating them to automated testing frees the time for the QA specialists to take care of more creative testing tasks.