New to automation testing? Not sure how to start? Don’t worry. I’m here to ease your path towards automation.

It is very simple to learn automation and solve automation problems. You need to see automation as a mathematical problem. Use divide and conquer strategy. Solve step by step.

First step

is to pick a simple automation problem statement. You will be self motivated after solving simple problem. In learning phase, while solving complex automation problems, if you stuck somewhere you might be demotivated.

So, how to choose your first problem statement?

Problem statement can be as simple as launching a notepad exe file using a windows batch command (.bat) and saving it. That’s it, still thinking how to proceed as never exposed/studied the batch commands.

Here comes the next step, i.e. hunting for required information about batch file, You can google it, ask your friends, colleagues etc. Automation tester should have these skills. (Reason being, experienced Automation testers are expected to implement variety of the automation). So, Be hungry for grabbing knowledge.

Divide problem statement into a smaller tasks.

Let’s continue with a notepad automation example and your tasks could be:

• Write command in command prompt to launch Notepad.
• On successful execution from command line, convert same into batch (.bat) file.
• Add command to exit the notepad application.

Hurray! your simple automation is ready now.

It’s time to broaden your thinking. Convert your simple automation to framework. Let’s do it.

• Convert absolute application path of the notepad exe location to relative.
• Create proper folder structure.
• Show user friendly messages before launching application.
• Scale your automation to launch other different applications.

And there are many more things you can improve.

I believe after reading this, you must be feeling that automation is very simple.

Then automate your first problem statement. Let us know your experience.

Last but not the least, don’t think about UI, API, Performance or any other automation at initial stage.

Start with simple steps, build your confidence, then think of solving bigger and complex automation problems.

I hope you like reading this article and hopefully automation tester within you will start automating problem statements which will help testing world.

Thanks, keep reading and updating yourself. See you soon.

Click here to know about should we really automate everything?