The document outlines best practices for test automation, emphasizing the importance of a clean setup, parallelization of tests, and the use of patterns like the page object pattern for reusability. It advises continuous testing, prioritizing test cases, and avoiding dependencies between tests. Additionally, it highlights the need to prepare the testing environment and collect metrics to assess the impact of automation.

1. Autom ation Best
Practices
L eo L a s k in , T es t Au t om a t ion Ad v is or

2. About Me
• Twitter: @LeoLaskin
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/llaskin
• Email: leo@saucelabs.com
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3. Manual Tests
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No Manual Tests*
* Testing Extreme Programming by Lisa Crispin and
Tip House

4. Start with a Clean System
• Having a clean system every time is paramount for
reproducible results
• SaaS grid based systems can be setup to be fresh
with no system cache, browser cache, cookies, etc.
© Sauce Labs, Inc. 4

5. Parallelizatio n
• Serialized tests take more time and cost more
money
• Using a Selenium Grid like Sauce Labs,
parallelized tests can spin up multiple
browsers for you or multiple tests
simultaneously
• 300 minute long tests can take either 5 hours
or as little as 1 minute.
© Sauce Labs, Inc. 5

6. Page Object Pattern
• Encourage reusable code throughout your test app
• Test code more organized for update if test
parameters like selectors change
• Tests are more readable with a natural feeling
Domain-Specific Language(DSL)
© Sauce Labs, Inc. 6

7. Test Constantly
• Don’t ever stop testing
• Having tests run on every commit is going to provide
significantly higher confidence in your software
• You have unlimited amounts of time to test. Use it!
© Sauce Labs, Inc. 7

8. Speed things up
• The average attention span of an adult is less then 5
minutes
• Try to provide results before context is switched
• Make the devs work for you not against you
© Sauce Labs, Inc. 8

9. Start Small
• Don’t rush to automate every test case
• Identify test case priority then automate
• Don’t automate end-to-end
• Divide and conquer
© Sauce Labs, Inc. 9

10. Divide your testing up
• By Functional Area
• By hosted server
• By backend server
© Sauce Labs, Inc. 10

11. Automation = Development Activity
• Automation is a real development endeavor, treat it
as such
• Beware of Cowboy Coding
• Copy/Pasting inside your code can be replaced by
reusable methods
• Source control is cheap insurance
• Bad coding practices = bad testing practices (and
vice versa)
© Sauce Labs, Inc. 11

12. Don’t Forget to Wait!
• Web pages don’t load instantaneously, and not all
elements load at the same time
• A lot of your failures in finding an element will
disappear if you use these
• Explicit or fluent waits are preferred for waiting for
single elements
• Implicit waits for waiting all the time
• Fluent waits for elements that can take variable time
to load
© Sauce Labs, Inc. 12

13. Avoid Dependencies
• Don’t allow tests to be dependent on each other
• One test’s actions should not drive another tests
assertion criteria
© Sauce Labs, Inc. 13

14. Prep Your Environment
• Make sure your CI rig can handle the number of jobs
running on it simultaneously
• Make sure your SUT can handle the number of tests
running on it simultaneously
© Sauce Labs, Inc. 14

15. Collect Metrics
• How long did test runs take before and after
automation?
• How many bugs do automated tests identify per
release?
• How many engineers does a test run require?
© Sauce Labs, Inc. 15

16. SAUCE LABS RESOURCES
February 29, 2016 © Sauce Labs, Inc.
• Sign up for a free trial of Sauce
https://saucelabs.com/signup/trial
• Check out our docs on Automation and how to use
Sauce at https://wiki.saucelabs.com
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