Any tester worth their salt wouldn’t want to work with non-maintainable test suites. Besides the fact that they break all the time and with relative ease, they also require testers to handle the test suites with care, which increases the wastage of time and effort.
Spotting Non-Maintainable Test Suites
When it comes to non-maintainable test suites, a simple UI change in an application can break too many tests and result in unnecessary delays in web UI testing. Test suites like these aren’t built with qualities such as reusability and low maintenance in mind.
Qualities of Non-Maintainable Test Suites
- Difficult to maintain.
- Fails frequently without clear reasons.
- Difficulty in making changes.
- Takes time to build and execute.
Disadvantages of Non-Maintainable Test-suites
Are brittle test suites really that bad? Can’t we afford to possess a couple of of them?
Brittle test suites may go on some machines while failing to try to do so on others. Their inconsistent behaviour may let potential defects go undetected thus threatening the standard of the top product/application. It might be time-consuming to form sure that each one of your tests is robust and non-brittle, but it's well worth the time and energy.
Problems with Non-Maintainable Test Suites
- Slow productivity.
- Overlooking real defects.
- Decreased confidence.
- Frustration due to false positives.
Creating Maintainable Test Suites
Brittle test suites can have severe and negative impacts on the progress of your testing with the demands that they are isolated and glued.
It is not very hard to make test suites that last considerably longer and withstand frequent changes. For a couple of testers, creating such test suites could be a necessity, while for a few, optional. However, from a testing point of view, it's best to make non-brittle test suites to avoid hiccups and unnecessary delays or quality depreciation within the product.
To build maintainable test suites:
- Testers must not assume that everything is to be automated or run manually. Clear differences between the utilisation of automation and manual test suites must precede test suite creation.
- The thorough identification of test automation tools and
defect management tools must be thorough with a futuristic view.
- Testers must study the wants clearly and understand the likelihood of the latest features/changes.
- Testers must pair and coordinate with developers while understanding the software.
- A good test design must be created with ‘don't repeat’ finality. The creation of test suites without a solid design might not be productive all the way.
- Testers should write clean and high-value test cases that require no/least maintenance.
Conclusion
Test suites inevitably turn brittle when testers attempt to create too many or too complex test cases. When test cases get duplicated thanks to a scarcity of proper mapping, test suites become unmanageable. One change within the requirement may trigger changes in many test cases.
The best approach, therefore, is to avoid building brittle test suites in their entirety and spend time making robust and high-quality ones and manage them with defect management tools. This method gets rid of any rework that may be required and saves effort, and guarantees quality output.
