You might have observed the stress over automation testing skills in most test analyst job ads in the last few years. Knowledge of automation tools like Selenium, Load Runner, JMeter, etc., is coming into the pictures. Probably it is the increasing complexities and integrations of the application that is turning manual testing less reliable to get the job alone. Customers are looking for more accurate results with high scalability but within limited cost. Thus, testing has widened its dimension from a ‘team’ to ‘crowd’ concept where testers are supposed to work in a cloud environment with automation knowledge.

Does that mean manual testing is dead or going to be obsolete? This may be a debatable issue everywhere, but most importantly, it is all about ‘survival of the fittest’ in this changing software eco-system. Hence, know the industry’s sparking reasons to understand why adding automation skills is essential for your career as a tester.

Related post – What are the Software Testing Current trends?

Reason 1: Changing software development model and market trend

The software industry is continuously shifting toward an agile model, which ultimately stresses the ‘whole team’ approach rather than the discrete team model. Moreover, there is a need for continuous integration in this model, which is very much time-bound from a QA perspective. So, in this model, the only optimum solution is automated testing to assure a quality outcome.

Reason 2: Increased complexity and use of automation

With the increased demand for flexibility in customer-end applications, applications are becoming more and more complex. On the other hand, integration technologies have also taken rapid upgradation, making the overall process huge and complex. Manual testing cannot suffice all the testing demands in this situation. Testing areas like browser compatibility, performance, database, integration layers, etc., cannot be done without automation. Moreover, several testing automation tools in the market can dedicatedly support these specific types. Hence, organizations are looking at these particular skills in the testers to get more accurate test results.

Reason 3: Companies are looking for automated testing skills

As organizations move towards automation, they look for at least one generation automation tool knowledge among the testers. It could be tested harness tool, data-driven tool, or action based tool based on their maturity level in automation testing.

Reason 4: It can help in career shift from programmer

As automation is a growing field, if you can add up automation skills in your resume and other programming skills, it will definitely show a new horizon for you. If you have a programming background, that will simplify your move to automation as a QA engineer. Once you have programming knowledge, you will have more ideas at the code level to generate test criteria on the code’s inner functionalities. As automation tests are mostly based on the code, the programming language’s knowledge is critical for a tester to work as the whole team. And it is a present demand in the current agile model.

For example, if you are testing a written product in Ruby, you must have some Ruby experience. Similarly during UI/UX testing knowledge of HTTP/HTTPS, HTML, CSS, JS, XML can help a lot.

Reason 5: Domain knowledge comes parallel to automation

Now, most testing companies are willing to hire candidates who have other technical knowledge that they bring apart from Testing Skills. Domain knowledge is another key area companies are looking for while hiring candidates for testing. Be it is testers with domain expertise like BFSI, Telecom, Healthcare, etc., or technical expertise of Programming Languages, BI Tools, SQL, and much more. Automation Testing fits into these categories.

Reason 6: Organizations are looking for cost-effective solution

It’s very well known that if you are automating, you make some of the life very easy who are tired of repetitive work. You are doing cost saving of the project, reducing person-hours for automated tasks. With the fast move towards automation and Artificial intelligence, the market is clearly indicating towards job cut. Hence, if you can’t grow simultaneously in terms of knowledge and skill, there is a higher risk to survive in the industry. So, learning automation tools are not only necessary but a need with the current market perspective.

Conclusion:

Learning automation doesn’t mean they need for manual testing is over. It is no denying fact that although you go for automation testing, you can’t do 100% automation testing even if it is an artificial intelligence-based. After all, manual logic is the key. But yes, the big ‘but’ here is there is no room for denying that the industry is trending heavily toward automated testing. Hence, as a tester, you can’t afford to bury your heads in the sand by ignoring the modern-day tools and techniques used for test automation. If you want to grow, you must be open to learning new skills and keep your pace with time.