According to a recent report by Capgemini, the top most prominent challenges that testers face in automation testing are associated with programming levels. However, many test automation tools in the market still require a certain level of coding skill to adopt. The problem is, testers are not always programmers. This knowledge gap can cause several drawbacks for the testing process, thus affecting the entire business’s workflow. 

In such a scenario, codeless test automation emerges to meet the increasing demand for a user-friendly automation solution. This blog can help you understand why codeless automated testing is predicted to lead the way in quality assurance in 2020.

Codeless Testing - The Future Of Software Testing

Automated Testing is the alternative solution for Manual Testing

In manual testing, testers have to try out multiple scenarios and inputs to detect bugs in a product. This step-by-step task leaves manual testers little space for exploratory testing and reporting, especially in the era of Agile processes.

On the other hand, automation testing offers organizations and testers predefined actions, comparable results, and intelligent reports with more substantial efficiency. 

Bottlenecks in Software Testing

When Automation testing is rapidly becoming an alternative solution for Manual testing in 2020, more and more companies are seeking out ultimate tools and strategies to successfully apply automation. This trend entails the significant growth of automation testing tools, namely Selenium, Katalon Studio, Appium, and many more.

However, QA teams must acquire sufficient programming skills to fully adopt these automation tools. In addition to that, today’s businesses are becoming more agile, products need to be updated more frequently, and that indeed makes testing even more crucial.

It also remains a challenge for businesses to hire testers and QA specialists with extensive programming skills to fully utilize Test Automation Tools.

Benefits Of Codeless Testing

#1) Low Learning Curve: Codeless testing allows QA teams to exploit UI elements and user-like behaviors to create their test cases, by eliminating the burden of coding and the complexity of automation frameworks.

#2) Minimize Effort on Mundane and Repetitive Tasks: The team can invest time and effort into functionality testing and user experience rather than wasting their effort into writing test scripts. 

#3) Less Unnecessary Scripting: As codeless testing tools mainly utilize UI and visual factors in test case creation, QA engineers can start testing GUI as soon as the developers have finished UI development. The technique of codeless testing is the native identification of the test objects, thus enabling QA engineers to start automation tests without having to read or write codes- if it’s not necessary.  

#4) Cost-effective: Codeless testing helps developers skip dependency parts. It means that the developers won’t have to be involved in building UI tests when testers can already execute automation testing by themselves. As such, the developers can focus more on other important responsibilities. 

What Creates A Promising Codeless Testing Solution In 2020?

Low To No Programming Skills Required

2020 is a significant milestone of Codeless Testing. When record and playback tools have had the signal of limitations, the product teams need an innovative solution i.e. Codeless Test Automation.

By taking away the burden of programming skills for QA engineers, codeless testing allows them to focus on their crafts rather than dealing with programming skills required for most automation frameworks.

Codeless testing tools require less coding skills while still ensuring Coverage, Scalability, and Maintenance capability. As such, codeless test automation is the most ultimate choice for testers at any level of coding.

Built-in Applications Of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are two of the top trending keywords of 2019 and expected to be in the main focus of QA teams and businesses in the current year as well.

AI applications can add significant benefits and make things easier for QA teams as they scale up. AI supports testers in Test case maintenance, Risk assessment, Issue detection, and Prioritization. AI also handles the piling up of log files, thereby revealing the insights of issue origin and how to deal with them.

“Smart” Analytics: Automated & Shareable Testing Reports

Speaking of codeless testing and AI/ML application, “Smart” analytics is the next criteria that a comprehensive automated tool ought to integrate. 

Handling hefty chunks of log history and data is not an easy task. AI-assisted dashboards and analytics allow the end-users to oversee the entire product quality and performance. Some automation solutions also support Monitoring test cases, Test results, and Execution time, along with sharing results across team members in a project.

This provides QA engineers, Developers, and Product managers with a clearer picture of the status of each execution, reduction in workflow disruption, and also a constant feedback loop between departments in an organization.

Katalon Studio - An Automation Solution Built For Codeless Testing 

Despite the overwhelming number of test automation tools introduced in today’s marketplace, the number of tools that actually satisfy the requirement of codeless testing is still very few.

Katalon Studio is one of the few mature platforms designed for Codeless Test Automation. From creating tests, managing test projects, viewing results in smart dashboards and analytics, collaborating with team members, to integrating with CI/CD systems, Katalon Studio allows the end-users to implement all with zero coding effort. 

An Easy-To-Adopt Tool For Testers At Any Level

• Powerful Record and Playback Feature: Test recording is the easiest way for fresh testers to start automation testing. Katalon Web Recorder Utility helps capture your actions on an application and then converts them into runnable codes in the back-end. .
• Behavior-Driven Development (BDD): BDD is one of the most popular methodologies adopted by Agile teams. BBD bridges the technical and communication gap between team members. As such, QA engineers, Developers, Product Managers, and Business analysts can easily and effectively collaborate in one project. Katalon Studio also supports Cucumber Runner for BDD and integration with Jira. 
• Smart XPath: When an application changes, element location is the thing that is most hard to fix. Smart XPath utilizes AI to automatically locate the application or web elements to cope with constant changes in every new release.
• Smart Wait: This brand-new feature is a new way to handle the Wait issues in Selenium. Katalon Smart Wait will automatically wait for all the front-end processes of a web page to complete before moving on to the next actions. Thus, all test execution results will be consistent, and QA teams can save a vast amount of time investigating false alarms.
• Image-based Recognition: This is considered as a breakthrough feature of Katalon Studio in test automation and is under development. In the first release, this feature enables the end-users to interact with the application elements with keywords, instead of locating them by writing scripts.
• Dual-editor Interface: The manual and scripting options in Katalon Studio allows automation newcomers to start automation testing right away, and the automation experts to comprise advanced test scripts.

Powerful-To-Scale Solutions For Large Teams And Companies

From a business perspective, for large teams & enterprises, reducing effort on manual and repetitive tasks means lower maintenance costs and better ROI.

That’s why all the features in Katalon Studio are designed to be scalable. No matter what your industry or the programming level of your team member is, Katalon Studio assists the team to perform QA tasks with the most minimal effort, at any stage of continuous testing.

The tool’s capabilities to scale with the teams/companies of any size is proven through their product development strategy:

• Complete Application Under Test (AUT) Coverage: Katalon Studio now is a complete cross-platform automation solution when it supports desktop app testing, along with Web apps, Mobile Apps, and API testing. As such, Katalon Studio can accommodate its users in all scenarios, i.e. even when their project requirements change.
• Test Objects Sharing: Import and export test artifacts across different test projects without having to re-write test scripts or start from scratch. This feature can help QA teams avoid wasting time on reinventing the wheel with a great number of testers.  
• Test Objects Refactoring: This feature allows end-users to reuse test objects and test cases. End-users can also view and manage the unused test objects within a few clicks.
• Rich Technical Resources to Improve Testing Skills: Katalon offers a rich set of documentation and a community of worldwide testers for everyone to level up their testing skills. More than a codeless testing tool, Katalon Studio is a designated solution for teams that want to convert Manual testers to Automation testers with the most minimal effort.

Katalon Studio is an automation solution trusted by more than 65,000 companies all over the world. Many of them are large Fortune 500 enterprises - AT&T, 53Bank, CVS Health, General Motors, are a few names among the list.

In 2019, Katalon Studio won the place of the best test automation software rewarded by Gartner Peer Insights, with more than 500 positive reviews from worldwide industry experts and thought leaders. 

Final Thoughts

Codeless automation testing is considered as a fundamental practice to adopt for product teams, and a criterion to have for an automation testing tool. Codeless test automation is the most ultimate solution for IT and business teams to bridge the gap of programming expertise, reduce testing bottlenecks, as well as minimize time and effort on maintenance costs. 

With a host of features tailored for Codeless Test Automation, Katalon Studio (www.katalon.com) is one of the best solutions you should try out in 2020. Regardless of your role in your team and project, Katalon Studio will be the tool you don’t want to miss out on in 2020.