Over his 16 years of testing experience, the most common challenges that he has faced multiple times:

1. Automated Test Suites are not able to catch enough defects.
2. Maintenance of Automation Test Suites is often a nightmare.
3. Redundant tests in regression suite, resulting in late detection of defects and higher execution time.

All of these above often reduce the desired effectiveness of testing, which sometimes casts doubts on QE’s role in the organization. That’s where effective test design techniques come into the picture.

Once the test suites are developed and optimized (through optimization techniques), these test cases should ideally be easily injected into a test automation framework.

Test Design Tools can further be integrated into the test automation framework to easily onboard test scripts to the automation framework.

A keyword-driven (codeless) test automation framework can help the above cause and should help the tester to achieve in-sprint automation goals.

An effective process on test design and automation thus can help the tester to detect defects early in the project or sprint life-cycle, which is a right step towards shift-left.

Such a strategy can help the QE to shift further left through DEA (Developer Enabled Automation) and ATDD (Automated Test Driven Development).

Takeaways from the talk:

• Effective Test Design Techniques
• Test Optimization Techniques
• Model-Based Testing
• Keyword Driven Test Automation Framework.
• Test Design – Test Automation Integration.
• Shift Left, DEA, ATDD.
• Unified Engineering.