Automation Testing is the fourth important step in the Software Development Life Cycle. Before sending any product to production, it is crucial to run manual and automation tests on the product to ensure its efficiency, accuracy, and reliability, so as not to experience any failure at the time of production.
As challenging as it looks, it can be mastered through consistent learning and practice. In this blog, let’s have a look at how long will it take to learn automation testing and what it is exactly.
What is Automation Testing?
Automation testing is a set of software tools and Scripts that carry out numerous tests on the product/application to ensure its functionalities before the actual deployment period. There are some automated scripts that help in CI/CD practices (Continuous Integration/Continuous Development). It has become necessary in today’s world to avoid the testing phase, a developer should complete Complete Guide to Software Testing and Automation: Master Java, Selenium, and Cucumber in order to clear the basics of Automation testing.
Benefits of Automation Testing
With an ever-increasing demand for the role of Automation Tester and Automation Testing, here are the benefits of learning Automation Testing:
- In general, it is faster than manual testers and saves up a lot of time for the workplace.
- Faster testing helps in faster delivery/deployment of the product.
- These test cases can be re-used for testing purposes.
- This requires less human intervention.
- Automation Testing is best for maintaining good speed and efficiency of the product/application in the software testing process.
- Has good accurate results as there will be no manual/human errors.
- Can run a massive number of test cases at a time.
- Provides faster feedback, immediately reports if any bugs are identified, and helps in fixing them earlier.
Stages of Learning:
To learn Automation Testing, the stages one must undergo are:
- Beginner Level: Fundamentals Concepts for Automation Testing
- Intermediate Level: Tools and Concepts to build a product or application.
- Advanced Level: Tools and Concepts to test the product or application that was built.
In this section, we will discuss the concepts and topics to be covered in each level in detail along with the estimated time to cross each level.
I) Beginner Level
The beginner Level is subdivided into two levels: Basics and Advanced Basics. At the beginner level, topics and concepts to be covered are: Data Types, Variables, Conditional Statements, and Control Loops in any programming language, and get some knowledge about object-oriented programming like creating classes, objects, and functions.
Make sure to do a project, implementing all these concepts to get a better understanding.
Basics:
In this level, we’ll focus on covering the fundamentals of Automation Testing which includes learning: Programming Languages, Scripting Languages, and Version Controls.
Let’s see them in detail.
1. Python/Any Programming Language:
Python is a very popular programming language that is used for building websites, analyzing data, building software, and creating automated tasks. It has many libraries like Pandas, Matplotlib, Scikit-learn, etc.
List of contents to learn in Python:
Data Types, Variables, Conditional Statements, Control Loops, Lists, Tuples, Dictionaries, and Sets.
2. Scripting Languages:
Scripting Languages are those programming languages that will be used to create some run-time instructions to add extra functionalities to the application. They can also be used for integrating complex systems. Having a bit of Scripting knowledge is a plus point and can speed up your learning process.
The Scripting languages required for this course are:
- JSON: It is a text format scripting language and is derived from JavaScript Object Notation Syntax.
- Extensible Markup Language (XML): It helps in defining and storing the data, and establishes communication between websites and APIs.
3. DevOps Version Controls
Software and tools that provide a collaborative platform to host, track changes in the code, and maintain multiple copies of code independently of each other.
Tools:
- Git: Git is a version control system that helps in tracking the changes that are made to the code regularly.
- GitHub: Cloud-based hosting service that helps in managing the Git repositories.
- GitLab: This is commonly used for large DevOps projects.
Estimated Time to Learn: 30 days [3hrs/day]
As a beginner, it may take up to 3 months to cover all the basics. Firstly, a beginner has to check if he has satisfied all the prerequisites.
Advanced Basics:
Advanced basics is focused on learning Cloud Services like Azure, Google Cloud, AWS, etc. We can choose any of them as per our requirements. Let’s see them in detail.
1. Microsoft Azure:
Microsoft Azure is a cloud-computing platform offered by Microsoft that provides its services through global data centers. It has a variety of certifications that can be achieved by writing the relevant examinations.
The services that should be covered in Microsoft’s Azure are:
- Azure Active Directory
- Azure CDN
- Azure Data Factory
- Azure SQL
- Azure Function
- CosmosDB
2. Amazon Web Services:
Amazon Web Services is a cloud computing platform and a subsidiary of Amazon. It provides a pay-as-you-go service. It has a variety of certifications called AWS Certified Learners that can be achieved by writing the relevant examinations.
The services that should be covered in Amazon Web Services (AWS) are:
- Elastic Compute (EC2)
- Elastic IP
- Elastic Load Balancer (ELB)
- Auto-Scaling (ASG)
- IAM User
- Virtual Private Network (VPC)
3. Google Clouds:
Google Cloud is a cloud computing platform offered by Google, that provides services like Big Data, Networking, Computing, etc. and runs on the same infrastructure used by Google Search and YouTube.
The services that should be covered in Google Cloud are:
- Computing
- Data Analytics
- Machine Learning
- Vertex AI
- Disk Storage
- VPN Connections
- Server space on virtual machines.
Estimated Time to Learn: 2-3 months
It takes at least 1 month to completely learn one tool. Overall, requires a time of 3 months. The best resources to learn the tools discussed above are lecture videos from Udemy, edX, and Coursera or you can always refer to YouTube for free lectures.
Implementing a real time project with the above mentioned concepts would give a better grip of the topics learned. Once this stage is covered, let’s move to the Intermediate Level.
II) Intermediate Level
Intermediate Level is all about building a product or application. In this level, DevOps and Agile method are the most important concepts to learn as an intermediate learner. You should learn about the required tools for automation testing. These concepts are to be covered while building a project to learn them effectively. Let’s have a look at the Tools in detail.
1. DevOps Automation Tools
These tools help streamline and automate the software development processes.
Some of the DevOps Automation Tools used are:
- Ansible – a tool of configuration management and orchestration
- SaltSlack – a configuration management and orchestration tool
- Chef – a configuration management tool that automates the provisioning of infrastructure.
- Puppet -configuration management tool that manages infrastructure
2. Agile Methodology
Agile is a project management tool that splits the project into several phases called Sprintsach Sprint is 15 days long.
List of some of the Agile methodologies:
- Kanban
- Scrum
- Extreme Programming (XP)
- Adaptive Project Framework (APF)
- Extreme Project Management (XPM)
- Adaptive Software Management (ASM)
Estimated Time to Learn: 4-6 months
The intermediate level is all about building projects and taking care of their maintenance. Learning about CI tools and to integrate them in different projects would definitely give an edge over others.
Mastering Agile Methodology to follow a systematic and efficient way to work on projects as a team will require 10-15 days of learning.
III) Advanced Level
The intermediate level is all about building the product/application whereas Advanced Level is all about the product in its production period. Now, so as to handle all the DevOps Automation tools used, we use DevOps testing tools.
1. DevOps Testing Tools
There are a variety of testing tools available for development and delivery teams to test the codes effectively. Some of them are listed below:
- Jenkins
- Open-source Automation Server.
- Easy to set up and configure.
- Does a variety of testing tasks.
- Selenium
- Open-source Automation Testing tool
- used for web applications
- can easily integrate with different development tools
- SoapUI
- Open-source tool
- used for testing web services
- TestComplete
- Commercial Automated Testing tool
- Has various purposes but is also used for DevOps testing.
- Easy to use
- Zephyr
- Commercial Automated Testing tool
- Has various purposes but is also used for DevOps testing.
- Easy to use
2. DevOps Pipeline (CI/CD) Tools:
Each tool has its pros and cons, so choose the one as per your requirement. Below is a list of some of the pipeline tools.
- Jenkins
- Bamboo
- Travis CI
- Circle CI
- GitLab CI
Estimated Time to Learn: 6-12 months
This level feels the most challenging and needs a lot of practice to get to this stage. Challenging yourself with complex scenarios and working on them to crack the best approaches will give you good expertise and knowledge.
Time Required: Requires at least 5 months of consistent learning time. The rest period is what we give ourselves for implementing the concepts learned in an efficient manner.
Tips for Efficient Learning
Here are some tips to learn the concepts, implementing and integrating them with real time applications efficiently.
- Consistent throughout the learning period: Consistency is essential when it comes to the learning part as it helps you to remember the concepts well. Spend at least 3hrs/per day on exploring and learning new trends.
- Stay updated with the latest trend: To stay on track, keeping up with the latest trends in Automation Testing is important, or else it will be difficult to keep up with the current growing competition in this field. There are communities for Automation Engineers, it would be very helpful to get updates from the communities.
- Be curious: It is always good to stay curious and explore the varieties as it helps to cover all the areas. Try to get out of your comfort zone.
- Problem-Solving Skills: Be a problem-solver, try to investigate errors and solve them on your own to challenge yourself.
- Hands-on experience: Gain real-time experience by doing real-time projects. Apply all your skills to build a project to test yourself. This also helps in gaining good experience.
Conclusion
In conclusion, on average it takes at least one complete year to learn Automation Testing. Being an Automation Tester can be a good career choice, however, the competition is too high for this role, so the best way to secure your place in this field is to participate in hackathons and increase your reach by joining communities, making connections, and contributing to open sources.
Mastering the Automation Testing role is not an overnight task but requires consistency and continuous hard work. Learning is necessary but implementing the knowledge gained is more essential.
Time Required to Learn Automation Testing – FAQs
1. How fast can I learn automation testing?
The time it takes to learn a low-code test automation tool depends on what solution you’re using. It can take weeks or months. Some rely on recorders and pre-built components to do some of the heavy lifting. For simple test cases, this can save time and might not require programming.
2. Is there any course for automation testing?
You can look for the – Complete Guide to Software Testing and Automation: Master Java, Selenium and Cucumber which covers in-depth knowledge.
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