What is Your Strategy for Writing an Automated Test Framework?

I have been giving this particular question a lot of thought in the past couple of months. The question is:

"What is Your Strategy for Writing an Automated Test Framework?" 

There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to assembling an automated test language:

A way to write and execute the tests, such as TestNG or JUnit in a Selenium WebDriver / Java based framework. A way to display to display what passed and failed. Detailed logging telling what the test is actually doing. A way to rerun failing tests. A way to run tests in a continuous fashion, whether once a day, or once an hour, or anywhere it between. A way to spin up multiple browsers and platforms...

You can easily spend a good six months putting the perfect framework in place and not have time to create a single test... and that is the problem.

How can you tell if your automation framework is fitting the needs of the people who are using it: The manual testers trying to figure out what tests are covered with the automation regression test suite, the developers who need to see what the automation finds, the QA Manager who is attempting to assess what the tests are covered by automation and where manual testers should fill in the gaps?

If you are trying to build a testing framework that fits the needs of so many stakeholders... why not use the same process that you are using to construct the web app you are building: Use Agile.

Make it an iterative process:

• Sprint 1: Bad code. Good tests. Run from local browser. No CI/ CD.
• Sprint 2: Good code. Good tests. Run from local Selenium Grid. Investigate setting up CI/CD locally.
• Sprint 3: Better code. Better tests. Good building blocks for tests assembled? More tests, faster! Work with DevOps to get Selenium Grid and Jenkins server remotely.

... What is your strategy for building an Automation Test Framework? Leave comments below!

Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Sr. QA Engineer

// Software QA Engineer since 1996.
// Working with Selenium WebDriver since 2014.
// Follow Adventures in Automation and Like us on Facebook!