Successful implementation of automated testing depends on selecting the right software testing tool. There are many commercial and open tools available in the market. So, the Automating Testing tool selection becomes tricky. This article highlights the 10 major features that software testing tools should have, and testing companies working on building these tools must be aware of these core capabilities to enjoy the long-term success of these tools.

1.    Test Maintenance

Test maintenance is a tedious and time taking task for the testing teams. Test scripts need to be updated when there is a change in the existing functionality. The automated testing tool should dynamically update the test scripts using the AI/ML approach to adjust the UI changes. A good software testing tool should support test script writing using more than one locator to identify the element. In case a particular locator is missing, the automation testing tool can find an alternative element locator.  This intelligent element selection approach reduces the test script maintenance effort and results in more stable tests.

2.    Easy Test Creation

A good testing tool should be easy enough for any team member to use and write the automated tests. But, on the other hand, it should be advanced enough to cover the complex application interfaces quickly to support the shift-left testing principle in Agile. In addition, writing tests in plain English language should be supported. The tool task should be to convert the plain language to test scripts using any natural language processing methods. Finally, the automated testing tool should give the ability to write any E2E test, which includes extracting data from Email or SMS, accessing the database, checking APIs, and verifying information from various files.

3.    Dynamic  Waits

Asynchronous JavaScript (AJAX) allows web pages to retrieve small amounts of data from the server without refreshing the entire page. Retrieval of this data from the server takes time. Test scripts have to wait till the display of required content. This conditional wait allows the test scripts to be more robust and flexible. The use of conditional waits improves the automated testing execution time while also preventing flaky tests. The testing tool should provide a way to handle AJAX calls present on the page and handle elements displayed using conditional waits.

4.    Parallel Execution of Tests

Testing tools should allow the parallel execution of tests in the secure cloud. The offered cloud services can be complete public, private or hybrid. All functional UI tests should run in parallel to save execution time to shorten test cycles. The testing environment should scale on the demand of the number of tests and provide the relevant browser and device support for its parallel execution.

5.    Assertions, and Control Structures

Automated Testing tools should allow script authors to insert conditional waits with different options by taking care of complete implementation logic behind the scenes. The test script is incomplete if no assertion is present. Therefore, automated Testing tools should focus on adding the assertions process more straightforward for its authors since it’s the most vital part of the test script. In addition, automated testing tools should support various control structures to control the flow of scripts. Writing complex test scripts requires various loops, and the tools offering low code/codeless test scripts must support this feature.

6.    Detail Reporting and easy Debugging

Test Reporting is an essential element of automated software testing as it plays a crucial component in a well-designed test automation tool. The success of a good software testing tool and its survival also depends on how effectively reporting mechanism is implemented. It’s not practical for testers to rerun the failed tests locally to find the root cause. An automatically generated report with brief debugging details about execution steps, screenshots, and even a video of the recording would be beneficial for the testers investigating the root cause. The testing tool should also allow you to interact with the tests when it runs live on the VM using breakpoints in Live Debug mode as a part of easy debugging.

7.    Integration with existing Tools

The automated testing solution should integrate with the company’s existing tools and technology. The automated test results should be trackable from the central dashboard to any Test Management tool like TestRail / X-ray. Other tools support like Jenkins, Bamboo, Travis CI, Circle CI, AWS Code Pipelines, JIRA, Slack, GitHub, and GitLab tools can also benefit the teams to have seamless integration of the new testing tool with their existing setup.

8.    CI/CD Integration Support

Test automation is an essential step in continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD). Therefore, testing tools should support CI/CD, integrate the automated test scripts with such pipelines, and automatically execute the tests and provide the results to the testing teams.

9.    Supported OS & platforms

The testing tool should provide support for cross-browser testing and native app testing. It should also be capable of running the software across different OS like Windows, Linux, and macOS.

10. Simple Setup and Easy Configuration steps

Automated testing tool setup should be easy with simple configuration steps. The team should not think about the setting up of test infrastructure. Instead, the automated testing tool should take care of all steps from test script designing to test execution. So that the test team can run as many tests as needed across all major browsers and devices at scale using the offered testing cloud.

Wrapping Up

Assessing a software testing tool for automated testing can be a little overwhelming if you don’t know where to start. However, the above-stated main features can lead you in the right direction. Every organization has different needs, and one should decide on the right testing tool by keeping in mind the team and project needs.