Imagine that a manual tester has this scenario: Checking whether the web app’s signup page (example.com/signup) validates input strings and registers a user successfully in latest versions of Chrome and Firefox, on Windows 7.

Assume that the signup page has these input fields—username, email address, and password. The tester will get a Windows 7 desktop and follow these steps, consecutively, on latest versions of Chrome and Firefox:

• Enter the URL in the address bar (example.com/signup)
• Enter an invalid string in each input field (email, username, and password)
• Check whether the input strings were validated against corresponding regexes and any pre-existing values in the database
• Enter ‘valid’ strings in each input field; click Sign Up
• Check whether “Welcome, ‘{‘username’}’“ page showed up
• Check whether the system database created a new userID for ‘{‘username’}’
• Mark the test ‘passed’ if it did, ‘failed’ if the signup feature broke anywhere during the test.

That’s a very basic system test. In the real world, testers are more likely to be checking all user workflows on example.com for breakage, on as many OS-browser combinations as needed to meet the benchmarked compatibility standards.

Depending on the number of manual testers (and thoroughness of test cases), it may take anywhere between hours to weeks to be sure that the web app is fully functional. Modern developers and product teams don’t have that kind of time to allot for testing, but they can’t set aside exhaustive testing in a hurry to release either. This is why they super-charge their testing with automation, powered by Selenium.

How Selenium Testing Boosts Agile Development

What is Agile? Agile is a development methodology. It starts with the simplest working version of the product design—one that can be continuously improved. Here’s what a typical Agile workflow looks like: Stakeholders agree upon the ‘simplest working’ design of the product. The design gets divided into smaller modules.

Each module is assigned to a cross-functional team of developers, designers, and Quality Assurance personnel. Teams work in sprints to create their modules within a time-frame (‘iteration’)—a window of one to four weeks.

At the end of each iteration, finished modules are put together. Tests are run and a functional product (with minimum bugs) is demonstrated to the stakeholders. The stakeholders evaluate project priorities, add customer feedback, and adapt as needed. The whole cycle begins again with the next iteration and a new set of modules. A ‘market-ready’ product or a new feature will always need multiple iterations. Where does testing automation come in: QAs are involved from early stages to run a series of unit and acceptance tests on modules. Integration tests on every iteration ensure that separately coded modules don’t break when put together. Each new iteration requires regression tests (so it doesn’t break the previous working iteration). It’s essential to keep track of code as well as test cases, so all iterations are well documented. Any Selenium Certification will be able to help you throughout the journey with pre-decided curriculum. While we’re on the subject, you should note that this recurrent testing is a theme in any sub-category of rapid, iterative development based on Agile, like CI/CD. How Selenium Testing is Integral to Continuous Integration/Delivery (CI/CD) What is CI/CD? Continuous Integration/Delivery prioritizes delivery of new releases of a build, frequently and quickly. A project that’s launched remains open to continuous iterations (like Agile). The only difference is this: the project also remains ready to be shipped at all times (instead of waiting for iterations to run their course). A CI/CD pipeline looks like this: A developer has code they wants to integrate into the project An external CI server does an ‘integration’ test—it grabs the source files and attempts to do a build with the new code. If the build completes successfully, the server packages the changes with source files. If not, the server notifies members of the team. CI engines (like Jenkins or Bamboo) have dashboards that display current and previous builds, logs of previous check-ins and their status (successful/failed), what broke (and when), etc. Everyone remains informed about any change in code, infrastructure, or configuration. This ensures that deployment failures are caught (and fixed) early. Note: There’s a difference between a ‘successful build’ and ‘quality build’. Even if a new integration is successful, it’s not considered ready to ship until it has passed a series of tests by QA engineers. That’s where automation testing with Selenium comes in handy. Selenium automates frequent and recurrent functional, performance, and compatibility testing. Many engineers ask questions what is Framework in Selenium? I would say you haven’t explored much on internet, you will find enough guides & courses that will help you from scratch. This gives developers near-instant feedback for faster debugging, leaving them with more time to code business logic for newer versions/features. Modern web development needs Selenium testing because: It automates repeated testing of smaller components of a large(r) code-base It’s integral to agile development and CI/CD It frees resources from manual testing It’s consistently reliable; catches bugs that human testers might miss It can provide extensive test coverage It’s precise; the customizable error reporting is an added plus It’s reusable; you can refactor and reuse an end-to-end test script every time a new feature gets deployed. It’s scalable; over time, you can develop an extensive library of repeatable test cases for a product