How to Avoid the Problems Companies Face with Quality Assurance and QA Automation

Today’s fast-paced and highly competitive business environment, requiring top-notch software with fast time-to-market, has dramatically increased the adoption of QA automation. Developers across industries trust automated QA testing to eliminate the human effort spent on mundane tasks and guarantee faster releases and quality software.

QA automation reduces human effort and errors associated with manual testing, but implementing the process is replete with challenges that often lead to failures that significantly impact ROI. This article examines a slew of operational nightmares companies face in test automation implementation that could lead to disappointment and offers tips on overcoming said obstacles to improve your overall test effort and project success. 

Common Challenges with QA Testing

Test automation systems speed up results when implemented correctly, running concurrent tests on multiple devices. This gives developers more time to create new product features and engage more actively in developing new scripts and reviewing code. The ultimate result is reduced regression testing time and faster test execution processes, leading to time, money, and effort savings. 

However, implementers of quality assurance must be aware of the difficulties and logjams in automation pipelines. When software developers dream about frequent deployments, they often need to consider that conducting QA testing is a complex, time-consuming phase of software development. In a world where testing is the most significant holdup of the software development cycle, teams must be aware of the prevailing challenges with QA.

Using a QA Service

While a QA service comes with benefits like saving time, effort, and resources, it’s never been an assurance that efficiency will improve automatically. Having unrealistic expectations from QA service providers can be a recipe for messing up a company’s testing processes, including having too many test cases and QAs that aren’t effective. Companies like Applause believe in throwing in warm bodies at a problem – putting extra resources or more people into the mix, assuming it will make a difference.

While this may be better than throwing your own team members at the problem, it won’t necessarily accelerate the solution. Since you are still relying on manual testing, it could lead to insufficient test coverage or too many unusable tests. This increases the risk of not covering essential scenarios and leaving gaps in software quality due to testing that doesn’t fit into your current development cycle.

Using QA Tooling Provider Outside Development Plan  

QA automation has the potential to introduce time and cost benefits that have a direct impact on a product’s success or failure. Still, it’s never a magic solution in and of itself and it shouldn’t be attempted in a silo. Many companies soon realize the challenges of engaging automation tooling outside a comprehensive development plan. From disconnection between developers and testing to a lack of understanding of the scope of automation, an us-and-them divide mostly ends with “finished” products that are thrown over the proverbial fence to undergo testing. 

The way digital products are designed and developed is changing at a break-neck speed, meaning that companies that solely depend on biased QA automation tool vendors claiming to possess a solution to all their needs somehow realize that their claims don’t always hold. Once the afterglow of the initial success fades away, there’s always a difficult question of what should be tackled next due to a lack of innovation that makes it difficult to maintain momentum. A better method is adopting a strategy that encourages continuous integration between the two sides.

Complicated Maintenance

Whereas QA automation is the buzzword in quality assurance, maintenance procedures that guarantee the overall efficiency of the test processes are a pain point for most companies. An effective testing process demands continuous maintenance of the entire testing protocol every time a feature changes in the software application. The challenge includes that the degree of care will vary based on the level of complication in changes, whether the featured updates are functional or non-functional, or whether practicable test cases should be executed before release. While test developers for QA automation can create numerous verification points, test scripts remain the crux of complexity, making it tricky for anyone other than a coder to make edits.

Building an Integrated QA Automation Strategy

As QA automation becomes the dominant practice in the industry, adopting an effective and efficient automation strategy is the surefire way of implementing changes. Such a strategy goes beyond simply implementing automation tools like TestRigor and includes appointing a partner who offers a more comprehensive approach. The result will be a shortened time to implement changes, reduce manual labor, and deliver real-time feedback.

Avoiding the challenges mentioned above starts with working with a software development team that is capable of integrating and coordinating all your processes and workflows. When you employ a tool or company focused solely on QA, you are only addressing the tip of the iceberg. A full-stack development shop that can handle QA automation, product ideation, UI/UX, and a variety of other services ensures that you’re seeing the entire iceberg and making sure that all your initiatives are part of a larger whole.

Companies want to reap the benefits of QA automation, but the process isn’t as straightforward as it seems. It’s easy to ruin the process, even with the best test automation tools, when you have unrealistic expectations. While most QA services mainly focus on having the right tools to avoid gaps in product quality, relying on automation alone can lead to inadequate or insufficient processes.

Thankfully, all QA automation problems are solvable if you consider that test automation alone isn’t and shouldn’t be the golden key. Success in test automation goes beyond picking the best testing tools or simply getting it right and is more about getting the right partners to avoid making costly mistakes that invite defects caused by minor bugs.

Development teams must now consider service providers offering additional tools and technologies beyond short-term success. Partnering with a company like Gigster saves a lot in the long run as it helps manage the workload, offering more reliable tests and fewer opportunities for human error.