The agile world has brought continuous integration and continuous testing into the picture and it has become a great way to make it possible to keep on releasing high-quality products in a shorter time.
With the rapidly changing technology, sequential testing fails to meet the developmental requirements resulting in a large number of test executions. Today continuous testing and scalability have become the necessity to meet rapidly changing developmental requirements of a faster test cycle. Parallel execution makes it possible to run tests simultaneously parallel on multiple devices and browsers for higher test efficiency in a shorter time. Automated testing can also help to reduce the chances of human error, making it possible to achieve more consistent and reliable results. Another great advantage of automated testing is that it can help to improve the accuracy of test results. By using ai-based test automation tools, testers can create tests that are more realistic and representative of real-world conditions. In addition, automated testing can help to improve the efficiency of the testing process by eliminating the need for manual testing. As a result, automated testing is an essential tool for any software development team that is serious about achieving high-quality results.
When moving from an old system to a new system data legacy is important and transferring this data is a complicated process. The process of verifying the compatibility of a newly developed system with an older system is done through Parallel Testing.
Parallel testing is a semi-automated testing process that depends on cloud technology to enable the testers to launch multiple applications or components of an application with the same input against multiple devices combinations and browser configurations simultaneously in order to reduce test execution time. The main goal here is to distribute tests across available resources to resolve the limitation of time.it is also to find out here that older version and newer version are behaving same or different and also to make sure whether a newer version is better and more efficient or not.
The main purpose here is to provide you with everything related to parallel testing including why, when, and how parallel testing is done and also its cost-effective way to test several changes at once. Firstly it is to understand-
Why do Parallel Testing?
The answer can be simply given by an example- any user who is previously using an older version of an application now upgrades to a newer version. In such a case, to evaluate data migration successfully testers need parallel testing. To verify that the newer version changes are not affecting the older functions and to ensure that the user is getting output as per the desired requirement.
When to go for Parallel Testing?
When the need for moving from an older application to a newer application and the data need to be imported from one to another Parallel testing comes into place. It comes into use when the need to define the outcome more precisely and synchronization is to be performed on two systems.
How to perform Parallel Testing?
Here the tester runs more versions of an application with the same test method or inputs or alternatively runs a single version across different devices, Operating Systems, or browser combinations. A cloud-based solution by integrating a test automation framework provides better care for device management and makes it easy to scale automated tests in different platforms.
Benefits of doing Parallel Testing
Whatever we have discussed above about parallel testing there is always more to scratch its surface and its effectiveness in the test cycle. As it depends on running virtual machines in the cloud it divides the invested test time by the number of test machines hence testing time automatically gets reduced. Despite the reduction in time and money invested there are many more reasons to go with parallel testing.
1. Speed up execution
From a Speedy execution perspective, it provides major time-saving in testing. Only one appropriate test script is needed to run against all targeted parallel devices to run the test application. It allows you to divide invested time by the number of environments thus cutting your testing time.
2. Better coverage
To run your application across as many different devices and browsers combinations as possible that are useful for the users is always good practice so that the risk of bugs that can sneak in and also the chance of releasing with hidden defects can be reduced. Parallel testing provides this wide compatibility.
3. Lower cost
Building, leading, and maintaining an internal infrastructure up to date for testing needs a lot of investment. But, parallel testing is affordable as it leases test time on a cloud-based testing grid which lowers the cost of testing and allows to run tests at high concurrency.
4. Optimizing CI/CD Process
Parallel testing can process test functionalities both rapidly and frequently. It provides the best support and optimizes the widely used techniques of Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery. It allows the developers to submit new code updates while testing in the process.
5. Improved Testing Process and Faster bug fixes
Parallel testing allows to improve the QA team routine and gives chance to enhance test practices and significantly allows to pinpoint bugs faster at an early stage. This reduces bug fixing time hence providing more time to establish and create new features than just continuously fixing bugs.
6. Updated and Result driven
Relying on cloud-based technology means the application is updated and the version is the latest according to the user's need. Parallel testing allows testing more scenarios in less time which means that there is a scene for improving more actionable data.
To get the most of the benefits of parallel testing it is important to note that there may come some challenges during the process of speeding up your test. When you know the issue earlier it becomes easy for you to avoid them later.
Here are some of the challenges that you may face while testing the application.
The issue with managing test data
In writing and maintaining automated tests one of the challenges is to make the tests self-running that is depending on each other. In the single system, if you run into execution issues you can make some changes in code, upgrade or downgrade the browser, etc but if you get such issues in parallel testing you have to do this in different systems and devices(not virtual machines). This can be tiring when the data gets messed up and not done properly as one test can delete the data for another test.
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Video recording and screenshots
Running multiple browsers on a single machine can bring more problems. Parallel testing comes with another UI tests-related challenge like the video recording of the test gets to no purpose when running multiple browsers on a single machine. The same is the case in taking screenshots that it takes the entire desktop screenshot rather than just the browser tab.
Resource management
While implementing parallel careful planning is very important which includes-How many tests to run parallelly, how many browsers, hours of testing, how long the system needs to be locked up in the process, and a much more detailed plan that needs to be practiced.
Automation expertise
The need to understand the application and its functionality in detail is a must to properly implement parallel testing. For that, there comes the need for an automation expert with deeper excellent knowledge and understanding in the required field in performing parallel testing.
Infrastructure limitation
Executing an effective parallel testing strategy comes with the focus and your dedication to put your efforts on the right thing. Maintaining your infrastructure can limit your successful strategy as you allocate your resources just in maintaining and supporting infrastructure. Scalability and availability of a secure infrastructure are difficult to maintain and that meets with their requirements and also the management and maintenance are difficult and costly.
Due to these challenges thought of switching from parallel testing can come to mind but there are ways to hit these challenges and gain all the benefits. So here are some tips for you to pin them down and bring in all the benefits of it.
Testing in a cloud-based environment
As it is known earlier building and maintaining own infrastructure is not efficient in implementing parallel testing because it is the cost consuming and somehow if you can do that you will not be able to make the most of parallel testing to test at high concurrency also to keep the testing environment up to date need a lot of resources. To put an end to all these, turning to cloud-based services like LambdaTest will be a good idea where you can access the needed devices, browsers, or operating systems at any time.
Avoiding data dependencies.
The restricting factor of an efficient parallelization is the dependencies between test cases. To parallelize tests successfully the script needs to be independent of one another. The strong recommendation to avoid this is while writing test scripts is to ensure that the test is self-sufficient and is modified to be independent of one another and can run individually in the same manner at any time in any order that can be folded into an efficient parallel testing strategy making your testing process hassle-free.
Managing data efficiently.
For the successful execution of testing in parallel, systematic test data management is very important. You can add two components in your strategy that is a creational strategy and a cleanup strategy which means to create test data right before test execution and the need to clean it up.
Build test to run in parallel.
Struggling with a larger number of tests just before the release date cannot be run in parallel all at once. Lacking planning correctly from the beginning can surprise you with stressful situations especially when the time limit is due. To escape this situation it is better to create test cases by parallelization, as test cases are shorter, simpler, and are fast to build to run in parallel.
Parallel testing using LambdaTest
A cloud-based platform like LambdaTest provides all the requirements like a fully managed platform with all the widely used combinations of devices and Operating Systems for conducting parallel testing successfully and reducing testing efforts. It has all the platforms according to your required need to test against. For more accurate testing you can also apply here real user conditions.
LambdaTest is an online cloud-based testing platform providing a combination of more than 3000 browsers and Operating Systems with their respective versions. It also supports most automation frameworks, including Selenium and provides a Selenium grid which makes it easy to organize test suites for parallel testing.
Conclusion
Without compromising the quality and delay in delivery parallel testing helps you save your time, run test cases at high concurrency, and constantly improved scripts make it easy to get more accurate results. But to enjoy all its benefits the mentioned challenges and correct strategy should be kept in mind.
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