Test Automation Pyramid

One of the critical parameters of the entire app development process is to test it thoroughly to ensure high quality is achieved which will eventually offer a seamless user experience. Testing apps is a complex, iterative process that involves various critical processes like integration testing, re-testing, regression testing, end-to-end testing, and so on. The testing activities should be strategized in order to have a clear idea as to how to proceed with the process efficiently. A good strategy is equivalent to half the work done, the rest depends on how well the execution is carried out, advanced technology, and the skilled workforce. The test automation pyramid is a part of the strategy that pictorially depicts the commercial implementation of testing of agile projects to yield better business outcomes.

The test automation pyramid is commercially accepted and used by organizations to understand and execute logical and effective testing for achieving better business outcomes.

What is Test Automation Pyramid?

The test automation pyramid is a pictorial interpretation of the tests performed in the software development process, their degree of involvement, and how they improve the application quality. The pyramid is depicted as a cone which consists of three layers — the lower part of the cone consists of unit testing, the middle part represents integration testing, and the higher layer represents end-to-end testing.

Unit Testing: The smallest testable component of an application is called ‘unit’ and testing of the units is referred to as unit testing. Unit testing occupies the lowest layer of the test automation pyramid and forms the largest division too. It is a highly dynamic stage as it involves constant, increasing addition of new features to the application. To support this extreme flexibility, organizations incorporate continuous testing approach to identify any bug at this lower level and ensures the basic unit quality is intact before moving to the integration stage.

Failure in the unit testing will not cause any major impact on the larger scale as induvial unit failure is easy to fix. In case of any unit failure, the defects will be resolved before integrating them.

Integration testing: Integration testing involves testing of one or more modules of the software that were unit tested and logically integrated and tested together. Integration testing forms the middle subset of the test automation pyramid and occupies lesser space than unit testing.

Integration testing is complex and slower than unit tests as it involves testing of combined units to evaluate their performance together. Here, the module combines of units that has been already tested, hence, this subset is placed above the unit testing and occupies lesser space of the pyramid. The integration testing is performed to check for any issues arising when integrating the units and are sent to the developers to resolve the issues whenever there is a deviation from the expected result.

End-to-end testing: End-to-end testing involves testing of the application flow from the beginning till the end. It involves testing of all features and functionalities to check for their performance when all these components come together as a whole application.

As the entire units and integrations are assembled in one single entity, it becomes the slowest subset of the test automation pyramid and occupies the smallest space at the top. End-to-end testing is tedious and time-consuming; hence, organizations are adopting agile practices to get efficient results.

When we look at the pyramid construction in detail, we can infer that majority of the effort goes in testing smaller and faster unit tests, which would otherwise be tedious to test and fix at higher levels. Hence, the test automation pyramid makes it easy for the teams to plan the testing activities by categorizing based on testing methods, thereby, improving the quality of the application.

Benefits of test automation pyramid

The key benefits of test automation pyramid can be listed as below:

• Test automation pyramid streamlines the testing process and offers a clear picture of the testing pipeline and the progress being made.
• The pyramid is created with emphasize on running the basic tests first and moving to the advanced levels later. This improves the process efficiency and reduces time and effort
• It gives a clear picture of which tests to be prioritized, which ones to be least on the priority, and which ones to be avoided
• As the testing is performed based on the type, and moved from basic to advanced levels, it immensely reduces on the time and cost involved. The testing is carried out step-by-step ensuring that all the bugs arising are resolve at the lower levels and only integration issues being focused on the later stages; this approach also improves the process efficiency.
• The pyramid sets a solid foundation to carry out testing by eliminating any kind of human error that might arise due to confusion in selecting the category that has to be tested first.
• Test automation pyramid gives a roadmap to proceed with the testing activities, however, automating the tests will give efficient and accurate results.

Conclusion

The article has touched all major points involved in test automation pyramid and successfully tried to explain the need for this pyramid and which tests to be performed first and which ones at the end. The insights provided in the article is applicable to test all kinds of software and web & mobile apps and has proven successful across varied projects. The pyramid explained above is the basic version of the test automation pyramid, organizations can further build personalized and sophisticated pyramids to improve reliability and efficiency. For example, the personalized pyramid may also include code analyses before starting with unit testing, and can also involve UI/ UX testing, API level testing etc. Personalization can further improve the quality of the applications.