Top 20 Automation Testing Questions & Experts Answers with Assessment

Where can a business reach without implementing automation in their process? 

Well, that’s easy to answer, NOWHERE!

Yeah. That’s right. With a hell lot of mundane tasks blocking their way, how can a business expect to grow? 

That’s why businesses nowadays are focusing on automating everything. Yes, including testing.

But how does test automation exactly work? 

Well, test automation is a very crucial part of software testing. In software testing, test automation is the use of software separate from the software being tested to control the execution of tests and the comparison of actual outcomes with predicted outcomes. Test automation can automate some repetitive but necessary tasks in a formalized testing process already in place, or perform additional testing that would be difficult to do manually. If we are to write about the contribution of Test Automation of continuous delivery, it might take up pages. Yes, Test automation is critical for continuous delivery and continuous testing.

So you can understand if you are not even remotely aware of test automation and its contribution, you don’t stand a chance in your DevOps Interview. So let us give you an idea about what kind of questions you might face about test automation in your next DevOps interview through these 20 interview questions that we fetched for you!

Automation Testing Assessment Answers

1) What is Automation?

Answer: Any action that is able to reduce human efforts is called automation

2) What is Automation testing?

Answer: Automation Testing is the process of using exclusive software tools or scripts to perform testing tasks such as data entering, execution of the test steps, collation of the results, etc.

3) What things can you automate?

Answer: Here is a list of things that you can automate:

• Regression test suite
• Smoke / Sanity test suite
• Build deployment
• Test data creation
• Automating behind the GUI like testing of APIs and methods.

4) When is Automation testing useful?

Answer: Automation testing is useful in the following scenarios:

               a) Regression testing: When you are in a dire need of a bug fix or new module implementation, you have to ensure that functionalities implemented remain unchanged and do not get affected at any cost. For this matter, you can end up running the regression test case multiple times.

               b) Non-functional Testing: Testing the non-functional aspects of an application.

               c) Complex calculation: checks or test scenarios that are prone to human errors.

              d) Repeated execution of the same tests: When you are about to run the same set of test cases for a different set of data or after each build release or on multiple hardware, software, or combination of both.

Automating the test cases in the above scenarios assists you in achieving the speed of testing with minimized human errors.

5) How do you identify the test cases which are suitable for automation?

Answer: Identifying the appropriate test cases for automation is the most important step towards automation.

6) Can you achieve 100% automation?

Answer: 100% automation would be difficult to achieve because there would be many edge test cases and some cases that are executed seldom. Automating these cases which are not executed that often will not add value to the automated suite.

7) How to decide the tool that one should use for Automation testing in their projects?

Answer: In order to identify the tool for Automation testing in your project:

               a) Understand your project requirements thoroughly and identify the testing scenarios that you want to automate.

              b) Search for the list of tools that support your project's requirements.

              c) Identify your budget for the automation tool. Select the tools within your budget.

             d) Identify if you already have skilled resources for the tools. If you don't have the necessary skilled resources then identify the cost for training the existing resources or hiring new resources.

            e) Now compare each tool for key criteria like:

• How easy is it to develop and maintain the scripts for the tool?
• Can a non-technical person also execute the test cases with little training?
• Does the tool support different types of platforms like web, mobile, desktop, etc based on your project requirements?
• Does the tool have a test reporting functionality? If not, is it easily configurable for the tool?
• How is the tool for cross-browser support for web-based applications?
• How many different testing types can this tool support?
• How many languages does the tool support?

            f) Once you have compared the tools, select the tool which is within your budget and support your project requirements, and gives you more advantages based on the key criteria mentioned above.

8) How do you decide which tool you have to use?

Answer: Concluding which tool is best suitable for the project requires a lot of brainstorming and discussions.

9) Once you identify the tool what would be your next steps?

Answer: Once we finalize the tool, our next step would be to design the framework.

10) What is the framework?

Answer: A framework is a set of the structure of the entire automation suite. It is also a guideline, which if followed can result in a structure that is easy to maintain and enhance.

These guidelines include:

• Coding standards
• Handling the test data
• Maintaining and handling the elements (object repository in QTP)
• Handling of environment files and properties file
• Reporting of data
• Handling logs

11) What are the attributes of a good framework?

Answer: The characteristics include:

• Modular: The framework should be adaptable to change. Testers should be able to modify the scripts as per the environment or login information change.
• Reusable: The commonly used methods or utilities should be written in a common file that is accessible to all the scripts.
• Consistent: The suite should be written in a consistent format by following all the accepted coding practices.
• Independent: The scripts should be written in such a way that they are independent of each other. In case one test fails, it should not hold back the remaining test cases (unless it is a login page)
• Logger: It is good to have implemented the logging feature in the framework. This would help in case our scripts run for longer hours (say nightly mode), if the script fails at any point of time, having the log file will help us to detect the location along with the type of the error.
• Reporting: It is good to have the reporting feature automatically embedded into the framework. Once the scripting is done, we can have the results and reports sent via email.
• Integration: Automation Framework should be such that it is easy to integrate with other applications like continuous integration or triggering the automated script as soon as the build is deployed.

12) Can you do without a framework?

Answer: Frameworks are guidelines and not mandatory rules, so we can do without a framework, but if we create it and follow it, enhancing and maintaining would be easy to implement.

13) What are the different types of Automation tools that you are aware of?

Answer: Open source tool like Selenium, JMeter, etc.

Paid tools like QTP, Load Runner, Ranorex, RFT, and Rational Robot.

14) What generally is the structure of a framework?

Answer: Normally the structure should have – (It would differ from project to project)

• A “src” (source) folder having the actual test scripts.
• A”lib” (library) folder having all the libraries and common methods.
• A “class” folder having all the class files (in-case using java).
• A “log” folder having the log file(s).
• A file/folder having all the web element Ids.
• A file containing the URL, environment, and login information.

15) Where will you maintain information like URL, login, password?

Answer: This information should always be maintained in a separate file.

16) Why do you want to keep this kind of information in a separate file and not directly in the code?

Answer: URL, Login, and passwords are the kind of fields that are used very often and these change as per the environment and authorization. In case we hardcode it into our code, we have to change it in every file which has its reference.

In case if there are more than 100 files, then it becomes very difficult to change all the 100 files and this, in turn, can lead to errors. So this kind of information is maintained in a separate file so that updating becomes easy.

17) What are the different types of frameworks?

Answer: Different types of frameworks includes:

• Keyword-driven framework
• Data-Driven framework
• Hybrid Framework
• Linear Scripting

18) Can you tell some good coding practices while automation?

Answer: Some of the good coding practices include:

• Add appropriate comments.
• Identify the reusable methods and write it in a separate file.
• Follow the language-specific coding conventions.
• Maintain the test data in a separate file.
• Run your scripts regularly.

19) Any kind of test which you think should not be automated?

Answer: Tests that should not be automated are:

• Tests that are seldom executed.
• Exploratory testing
• Usability testing
• Test which is executed quickly when done manually.

20) Do you think that testing can be done only at the UI level?

Answer: Today as we are moving to the Agile mode, testing is not limited to the UI layer. Early feedback is imperial for an agile project. If we concentrate only on the UI layer, we are actually waiting until the UI is developed and available to test.

Rather we can test even before the UI is actually developed. We can directly test the APIs or the methods using tools like Cucumber and FitNesse.

In this way, we are giving the feedback much early and are testing even before the UI is developed. Following this approach will help us to test only the GUI aspect of small cosmetic changes or some validations on the UI and will help the developers by giving more time to fix the bugs.

Conclusion:

Hopefully, this sneak peek was enough for you to understand what kind of questions you’ll be facing during your DevOps interview. Want to know more about test automation and its role in continuous delivery? Join our DevOps Courses to learn about it in detail!

Topic Related Post