Five Tips to Increase Automated Test Suite Performance
When it comes to automated testing, performance is critical. Nobody wants a slow and bloated test suite that takes forever to run, especially when you need to run it every time you push new code.
So, how can you ensure your test suite runs as efficiently as possible?
In this blog post, you’ll find five tips to speed up your automated test suite so you can spend more time coding and less time waiting.
1. Reduce Tests Through the UI
Tests through the user interface (UI) are generally slower and flakier than other test types, such as unit or API tests. That’s because they rely on spinning up and interacting with web browsers, which can be slow and unpredictable.
If your current test suite is UI-heavy, consider converting UI tests to API and unit tests where possible. For example, for a login feature, you can unit test the business rules of the login form fields, such as: “The username and password field must not be blank.”
Suppose you’re testing the login flow from submitting user credentials to accessing a session token to visit protected pages. In that case, you can test the individual API calls that power the login without launching a web browser.
Taking those steps will help offset the slow execution time of UI tests and make your overall test suite faster.
Recommended reading: Automated Testing 101: What It Is & Why It Matters
2. Parallelize Your Tests
If you’re not already running your tests in parallel, this is a great way to speed up execution time.
You can reduce the overall time needed to complete a test run by running tests in parallel. For example, if you have 100 tests that take an average of 1 minute to complete, it would take around 1 hour and 40 minutes to run all 100 tests sequentially. But if you run them in parallel, you could cut the execution time in half.
Of course, there are some challenges with running tests in parallel. For example, you will want to ensure that your tests do not interfere or conflict. But if you can overcome these challenges, parallelization can be a great way to speed up your test suite.
3. Focus on Automating Critical Functionality
There’s no need to automate every single feature in your application. Instead, focus on automating the most critical functionality you need to test. Doing so will help you reduce the overall number of tests in your suite while providing good coverage.
For example, suppose you’re testing a login flow. In that case, only automate the critical steps in that flow, such as entering the username and password, submitting the form, and checking for errors. There’s no need to automate everything else on the page, like the navigation or the footer links.
4. Invest in Continuous Integration
Continuous integration (CI) is a process where code changes are automatically built, tested, and deployed to a staging or production environment. CI can help reduce the time it takes to run your test suite by automating the build, testing, and deployment process. There are many different CI tools available, such as Jenkins, Travis CI, and CircleCI.
Investing in a CI tool can help speed up your test suite by automating the build, testing, and deployment process.
Recommended reading: Validating Ideas Through Concept Testing
5. Use a Cloud-Based Testing Solution
If you’re not already using a cloud-based testing solution, this is a great way to speed up your test.
With a cloud-based testing solution, you can run your tests on real devices in the cloud. A cloud-based approach can be faster and more reliable than running tests on local devices or emulators. There are many different cloud-based testing solutions available, such as LambdaTest and BrowserStack.
Conclusion
Using the above tips, you can speed up your test suite and reduce execution time to move your products forward and get to market faster.
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