Key Considerations before Adopting Selenium Framework

Organizations have become more aware of the crucial role of testing in software development life cycle and in delivering high quality software products. As the competition in the IT industry grows stiffer, the pressure to deliver high quality products with fewer resources and limited time is intensifying. 

Automation testing helps to overcome these criteria and also addresses the challenges presented by manual testing. Automated tests can be executed can be executed multiple times and much faster than manual tests. They help to find defects and issues which are more often overlooked in Manual testing. Automation helps in automating repetitive tasks and help to focus on high risk projects. 

Identifying the right automation tool is critical to ensure success of a testing project. A detailed analysis needs to be conducted before selecting a tool. The selection of a tool depends on: 

-      The application and its technology stack to be tested.

-      Detailed testing requirements.

-      Available skill sets in the organization.

-      The investment required.

-      Ease of adoption

-      Ease of scripting and reporting capabilities

-      Usage of tools

Selenium is for automating web browsers for testing purposes. It is  a free, open source tool with a different set of tools, which support test automation through different approaches. As it is an open source technology, it requires a development experience to make the automation tools available. Let us review the most important factors which affect the adoption of Selenium test automation tool.

-      Scope of the project: It is extremely important to have a very clear vision of the framework and the expectations. 

-      Complexity of the application: The size of the application needs to be determined based on the number of tests that has to be automated. This definition may differ from the perspective of a group or an individual. 

-      Supporting tools and technologies required: Once the automation framework is identified, based on the requirements, the required tools need to be identified. Further the dependencies and implications need to be understood. Selenium alone is not sufficient to complete test automation. There are other related tasks like reporting and log tracking, etc. For these separate tools are required, which need to be integrated with the framework.

-      Implementation of the Framework: In addition to just scripting, there are many other requirements like reading data, tracking and  reporting results, tracking logs, triggering scripts based on input conditions etc., which needs a framework in place. Web applications are not simple and involve a lot of tools and technology. Selenium may not be strong enough to build a strong framework based on the third party tools required for completing the testing requirements.

-      Learning and Training: Implementing any new software requires sufficient time for learning and training purposes. Selenium testing involves learning a programming language. The time involved, the resources available, the investment required in this phase is a deciding factor in the adoption of  Selenium 

-      Environment Setup: This deals with set up the code in the test environment and production environment, writing scripts and creating property files for tracking the environment and credentials.

Conclusion

The issues discussed above hold true for almost all automation frameworks under consideration. Selenium is mainly used for functional aspects of web based applications on a wide range of browsers and platforms. However, Selenium is not limited to testing only, it can emulate user actions and help to automate monotonous tasks in testing web applications. Considering the diverse composition and flexibility of the automating framework, after considering all the pros and cons, it is an investment worth making.