My Greeting to Testers and Automation people! My name is Piyush Srivastava, and I’m working as Tester in functional & Automation for around 6 years on various projects as a Senior Consultant and SME. Now I’m working in *Luxoft * where I got great chance to upskill myself in better way. I wanted to share some API_ testing capabilities for the testers.

With the help of this article, I wanted to encourage you to start using this in your daily work or at least give it a try it will increase your performance knowledge for sure.

*Please note i I'll be adding more skills as i have around 10-15 skills will add the same in later stage of post in continuation of previous post writing the same. *

1. Possess good knowledge on Automated testing tools:
The automation testers should be well-equipped with ample knowledge about the automated testing tools present in the market that eventually help to optimize the overall testing process.

There is a wide range of automated testing tools available in the market that provide extremely superior benefits to an enterprise. To excel in the automation testing field, the tester should have good understanding and exposure of the automation test tools.

Depending on the selection of the automated testing tool, the tester should be able to classify whether certain test cases can be automated or not.

Once the tester is well-versed with the automated tools, he can utilize his automation testing skills for designing the test cases that guarantee good test coverage and speed up the test execution process.

2. Clear understanding of business requirements :
An automation tester needs to have a clear understanding of the business requirements.

Let’s understand this with an example which all of us must have come across. If you are unwell and you visit a doctor, the doctor while examining you, also wants to know your medical history whether you have suffered from any kind of disease or ailment in the past. Depending on the overall past and present medical condition he can then suggest certain medicines for recovery.

On the same note, a skilled automation tester must know the application inside out, both at frontend and backend level before the testing phase begins.

An automation tester must be familiar with :

• The programming language on which the application is developed.
• Browser or device requirement where the application is to be accessed by the end-users.
• APIs or any web services connected to the application and their working.
• Which databases are used for storing the backend information? Working of all the modules and features in the application.
• Is there a need for manual testing for testing some areas in the application?
• Planned test execution time by the automation tester.
• If there are any defects that were deferred in the last release and expected to be fixed in this release and the overall impact of this fix on the application.
• Test execution completion delivery date.
• Project release timelines.

3. Well versed with agile, DevOps and continuous delivery :

Automation testing demand in the market is increasing with new-age agile and DevOps methodology replacing waterfall model.

As agile methodology involves frequent changes, it is essential to have an automation testing process in place for the same. Automation testers can automate the test scripts for a module to be able to respond to frequent customer induced requirement changes.

To achieve good speed and agility it becomes important for an automation tester to automate the testing process and configure them to automatically run when the deployment is completed in a testable environment.

Automation tools and continuous integration tools such as Jenkins, Git lab can help us achieve this integration. So, the automation tester should be familiar with the usage of these integration tools required for automation. Automation ultimately ensures the success of DevTestOps.

4. Maintain good communication and interaction with stakeholders :

Having good communication skills and collaboration is essential for automation testers. This is most important before and during the testing phase as automation testers have to interact with developers, business analysts, feature engineers (possessing excellent domain-specific knowledge) and all other stakeholders.

In the agile refinement sessions, the automation testers can formulate open questions to be raised in front of all the stakeholders to get better clarity on the requirements.

Also, once the automated test scripts are designed, the automation testers need to give a walkthrough to the developers, business and all other stakeholders.

During the test execution process, if any defect retest fails, the testers apart from raising the defect on a specific tool can also communicate the same to the developers in the daily stand up meeting. Sometimes, environmental issues may appear that could block the testing process and delay the delivery. Maintaining good communication about these issues will avoid any end-time surprises related to the time of delivery/release.

The automation testers can interact with all the stakeholders and discuss the overall testing progress and status in the agile scrum meetings.

5. Curious to learn new technologies and trends :

Being an automation tester you should be willing and curious to learn new technologies in the area of automation.

Considering the history of automation tools being widely used in the organizations, earlier firms preferred using QTP (Quick Test Professional) tool for automation testing for a web-based application whereas now Selenium WebDriver is in huge demand.

In the market, demand for new automated testing tools keeps on changing as per advanced technology and the benefit it provides to the software industry. So, be it QTP, Selenium, Testsigma or some other automated testing tool, an automation tester should be well versed with the automation techniques.

The automation concepts should be very clear to the automation tester so that he is well aware of what needs to be automated, how it needs to be automated and why it needs to be automated.

If you are good at implementing the logic needed for automation then you can apply the same logic in any kind of automation tool and design appropriate test suites suitable for testing a software application.

6. Able to assess and mitigate the risk :

Though test automation seems like a strategic step in the agile world, there is always a risk associated with the test automation process.

If there are changes in the interfaces, after the automation test scripts were prepared, it can cause a problem during the test execution process as irrelevant test results will be generated due to these interface changes. Similar problems might occur in case of changes in business logic. This incurs additional cost to support the changes, also it can involve modification of test data and impact other test cases as well.

There’s a risk of issues related to the environment execution. This increases the total time taken for testing as the application is not stable throughout the testing process. Overall increased testing time results in a delay in delivery of the software.

An automation tester needs to keep a mitigation plan ready for such risks encountered during the testing phase. The testers need to monitor the test execution process and immediately report any obnoxious application behaviour to the developers and the stakeholders.

Early identification of such problems helps to prevent the occurrence of such issues and mitigates the risks.