The challenge for businesses competing in the digital world is to reinvent themselves using software. While speed is important, they also need the self-assurance to reach the high standards necessary for successful user experiences. Where test automation helps to build that confidence is in this area.

The use of test automation frameworks increased to accomplish functions including managing a test referential, running test suites, and producing reports. Frameworks fall short in this area because of the pressure of transformation, which necessitates speeding test automation in the software lifecycle.

A new wave of products called test automation platforms with collaboration, connection, and insight creation features have emerged. These characteristics allow for more complex test automation use cases, which ultimately help the rapid delivery of software while maintaining confidence.

This article discusses the definition and core characteristics of test automation platforms that can speed up the production of worthwhile software.

What is a platform for test automation?

Systems that may address a fundamental issue while remaining linked and interacting with their ecosystem are known as platforms. This "always-on" interconnection allows users and partners to take advantage of business or technology services.

A platform can handle one or more test automation use cases, such as functional, security, or performance, and is also tied to its ecosystem. That is the primary distinction between frameworks and those typically used locally and independently. A test automation platform's main advantages are: 

1. Improve time-to-market while supporting new use cases
2. More freedom to add features and modify existing ones
3. Encourage community collaboration among users
4. Create a network of partners who can offer support.
5. Ease the integrations' deployment

Overall, a business offering a test automation platform is able to quicken its innovation cycles to give users a useful experience. Platforms boost the proportion of interactions between players that increase their chances of surviving, much like the theory of evolution.

But putting such a platform into action is not simple. It requires the capacity to provide the necessary platform attributes and to very effectively solve essential challenges.

a test automation platform's five most important features

Depending on their goals, typology, and maturity, platforms can have a diverse range of characteristics. Any test automation platform that wants to hasten the release of useful software should focus on the following 5 crucial qualities:

• Attribute #1: 

Modularity Modularity refers to a software component's capacity to be easily reused and explicitly separated using abstractions and interfaces. Maximizing service composition and reuse flexibility is the main benefit.

The different services connected to test management or test execution, for example, are isolated in components with "high cohesion, low coupling" in a modular test automation platform that adheres to the separation of concerns principles.

Making the platform easier to maintain and develop is a key value. a crucial necessity in an ecosystem where software must constantly evolve. The second is to make it possible to disclose services that partners can use, but only if the platform is open.

• Second attribute: Open

An open platform can directly plug in a wide range of users and partners. Support for crucial business operations that call for multi-actor collaboration is made possible by this always-on interconnectivity.

The settlement of more complex issues is made possible by the composition of services among players. Being natively linked with a CI/CD platform, a ticketing system, and a requirements management solution can increase the value of a test automation platform.

Test automation platforms improve the value they give and typically increase their user base by resolving more complicated issues throughout the product lifecycle. Although this increase is positive, a scalable platform is required to sustain it.

• Scalable is the third attribute.

Scalability is, in general, the ability to vary the size or scale of something. In this context, we're talking about the capacity of test automation platforms to accommodate more users, partners, and use cases that significantly increase workloads to manage.

Platforms for test automation rely on automation and technology to maintain a constant flow of activities throughout the day and night. These components must be scalable if they are to keep up with the rising demand without missing out on opportunities or losing users.

For test automation platforms looking to speed up software delivery, scalability is a necessity. Due to insufficient scalability, teams won't wait hours for a concurrent test execution to finish. In order to use the data to make decisions, they need answers as soon as feasible.

• Fourth quality: data-driven

Organizations that rely on decisions on data are sometimes referred to as "data-driven" organizations. Although they must have produced the data in the first place, test automation platforms do need to make automated judgments based on data.

The openness and scalability of a test automation platform's services will allow them to support an increased flow of activity once they have discovered users who frequently utilize their solution. The ecosystem as a whole benefits from this constant flow of data, which necessitates its generation, storage, and utilization.

Data can be used in a variety of ways using test automation platforms. Users can get benchmarks for testing procedures and outcomes, and execution data can be used to feed a self-healing system or an automatic flaky detection method. But greater authority also means greater accountability.

• Secure is attribute 

The importance of systems security has increased during the past ten years. The key elements affecting the rise in assaults and asset protection by organizations are the quantity of commercial transactions conducted, the interconnection of systems, and the value of data.

Security must be taken into account as a necessary feature for a test automation platform that depends on linked software to enable operations around the clock and data to create value. A security breach may spell the end of users' and partners' trust in the company, having long-term detrimental effects on the operation.

It needs large expenditures and ongoing monitoring of security topics to maintain the rising usage of test automation platforms. The digital transformation is pushing for faster rates of software delivery, so this is just the beginning.

Delivery of software is accelerated using a test automation platform.

On top of a well-made software product, these foundations are difficult to grasp, which highlights the difficulty in living up to the high expectations set by the digital environment.

You can now evaluate test automation solutions more clearly to understand their capabilities and to maximize the value you can capture both now and in the future, regardless of whether you are developing, contributing to, or utilizing them.

Accelerating the pace of software delivery while maintaining confidence is the major additional value that test automation solutions can provide. In order to maintain your organization's capacity for innovation, test automation is there to assist your rhythm of software updates.

Adopting such technologies to enhance your software lifecycle is never too late. Examine each platform requirement's response in detail to increase the possibility that the platform will support the acceleration of your software delivery. Just get going now

Conclusion

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