Rebuild Confidence in Your Test Automation

False Positives

Let us begin with a short explanation of false positive:

This kind of destructive automated test occurs more frequently with user interface-driven testing, mainly because these tests have the biggest likelihood of failing (synchronization and timeout issues, exception handling, uncommunicated changes in the product, etc.). If your timeout and exception handling aren’t correctly designed, false positives can be quite time-consuming in terms of root cause analysis and preventing them in the future. When these false positives recur on an irregular basis it might be even more difficult to determine what is causing the problem.

When your team or business is using continuous integration or continuous deployment strategy for software development, false positives may be very aggravating. When your build pipeline contains tests that occasionally create false positives, your build may occasionally fail because your tests aren’t capable of handling exceptions and timeouts properly. This may eventually lead to you eliminating the tests from your pipeline entirely. Although this may temporarily alleviate your problem with shattered buildings, it is not a long-term approach. There’s a reason you’re putting in the effort to create these tests (right?), thus they should be included in the automated testing and delivery process. As a result, you should investigate the underlying cause of these false positives as soon as they arise and rectify them as soon as possible.

To avoid false positives in the first place, you should invest effort into developing strong and reliable tests, including adequate exception handling and synchronization procedures. This will surely require time, effort, and expertise up front, but a solid foundation will pay off in the long term by eliminating these incredibly annoying false positives.

False Negatives

Let us begin with a short explanation of false Negatives:

While false positives might be quite annoying, at least they make themselves known through error warnings or unsuccessful CI builds. The significant threat of decaying trust in test automation lies in negative cases: tests that pass when they should not. The more you depend on the outcome of your automated test runs when making procedural decisions, like a deployment into production, the more crucial it is that you can trust that your test results are an accurate reflection of the quality of your application under test, rather than a hollow shell of tests that pass but do not carry out the verifications they are supposed to.

False negatives are particularly difficult to identify and manage for two primary reasons:

• As previously stated, they do not actively demonstrate their presence, such as by displaying an error notice, as true positives and false positives do.
• While certain tests may be false negatives from the beginning, a large portion of false negatives is generated over time and after continuous revisions to the product under test.

Along with establishing new tests and upgrading outdated ones, a critical component of your test automation approach should be to frequently assess the fault detection performance of your existing test cases. This is especially true for tests that have been operating smoothly and successfully throughout their early beginnings. Are you certain they are still carrying out the correct assertions? Or would they also pass if the application under test functioned incorrectly? The following is a wise plan for constantly evaluating that your tests are still deserving of the confidence you put in them:

• When you develop your tests, test them. Depending on the type of test and assertion, this can be as easy as rejecting the assertion stated at the conclusion of the test and checking if the test fails. When you employ test-driven development, you’re automatically doing something similar because your tests won’t pass until you add actual production code.
• A passing test that is meaningless might be great for the statistical data, but it adds maintenance work you probably can do without. Regularly review your tests to ensure they still have their original defect detection power and are not redundant due to changes that have been made to your application since the test was developed.

I propose looking at mutation testing as a technique for establishing and maintaining a high-quality, robust test suite for unit tests. Here’s what it means:

Although doing a mutation testing run can be time-consuming, especially for large systems, it may provide you with significant insight regarding the quality and defect-detection capabilities of your unit test suite. Building reliable automated tests necessitate programming skills, but it may be even more crucial to possess the ability to determine whether to automate a test at all. Determining the most effective technique to automate a specific test also requires skill. I suggested and found the simplest answer to a test automation problem—a clear plan. If the road I’m on doesn’t lead to a straightforward answer, this option is probably not the most efficient either.