Design Patterns In Test Automation World

Introduction

Software development has a lot of methodologies and standardized approaches to make the development process efficient such as object-oriented programming, domain-driven design, test-driven design, and behavior-driven design, etc. Automation testing, since the very beginning, has been relatively new when it comes to processes and standards. But now the benefits of test automation have helped it gain a lot of exposure in terms of standardization and has been under the process of continuous improvement and evolvement through design patterns. Automation testing is the process of developing software to test software. Hence, the test patterns are loosely similar to design patterns that are used in software development.

Design patterns show how to design the test automation tools so that it will be efficient and easy to maintain. Amongst the biggest test automation challenges is code maintenance. A lot of test automation projects have drowned or were scrapped due to the inability of the frameworks to cope up with the growing codebases. In order to keep the maintenance cost low, the test automation service engineers should strive to minimize the code that they reinvent or create from scratch by using existing functionality for common, generic, or repeated operations.

What are the types of Design Patterns in test automation?

1. Design Patterns in Test implementation

From the test implementation perspective, different design patterns can be understood as types of test automation frameworks

2. Architectural Design Patterns

Multi-Layered Architecture

Meta Framework

3. Functional Design Patterns

Page Object Design Pattern

What are the advantages of using Design Patterns in Test Automation?

The use of design patterns offers below advantages:

Low maintenance effort and time
Low maintenance cost
Enhanced code reusability
Enhanced reliability
Structured codebase which is easy to fix and extend
Improved communication

Conclusion

The design patterns contribute to a major chunk in defining the test automation best practices. The benefits of test automation cannot be reaped effectively without implementing the required design patterns specific to a test automation project.

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Kripaa Krishnamurthi

She is a marketer who specializes in researching and branding Cloud/ IT technologies and services. She is an avid reader and is always curious about the psychology behind consumer behavior.

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