Test automation is not a one-time task—it’s an ongoing process that evolves with your product. For automation to remain effective and reliable, your team must be intentional about how it’s built, maintained, and scaled. Let’s walk through five key ways to keep your automation efforts on track and delivering value.
1. Maintain High Standards
A strong test automation suite starts with clear standards—and sticks to them. Here are three rules to live by:
- Valuable Tests: Only write tests that deliver value. Quantity doesn’t matter if the quality is low. Regularly review your tests to remove redundancies, improve validations, or replace outdated ones. Treat test code like production code—it deserves the same care.
- Reliable Tests: Automation is only helpful if it’s dependable. A flaky test undermines trust. Make sure tests are isolated (don’t depend on each other), and run them in dedicated environments to avoid interference. If a test fails, have a clear process in place to diagnose and fix it.
- Fast Tests: The faster the tests, the faster you can ship. Aim for quick feedback by parallelizing tests and focusing automation on lower layers of the stack. UI tests are useful, but keep them minimal and purposeful.
Keeping these principles top-of-mind ensures your test suite stays robust, clean, and useful over time.
2. Make a Maintenance Plan
Automation maintenance is not optional—it’s essential. A good maintenance plan covers three things:
- Add New Tests: Each new feature should include new tests. Talk with developers and testers early to decide what to automate.
- Update Old Tests: As your app evolves, so should your tests. Update assertions, test data, or flows as needed. Remove irrelevant tests instead of letting them rot.
- Fix Failures Quickly: Builds should stay green. If a test fails randomly, isolate it or rerun it. If it’s a legit failure, treat it as a potential bug in the code and fix it immediately. Flaky tests should be improved before rejoining the main suite.
Automation that isn’t maintained becomes a liability. Plan ahead to keep it healthy.
3. Use Continuous Integration
Automation shines when it runs early and often—and continuous integration (CI) makes that possible.
CI tools can trigger your tests automatically whenever code is pushed or on a schedule (e.g., nightly runs). This increases confidence in changes and helps catch issues sooner than manual or ad hoc testing ever could.
There are many CI tools available—Travis CI, GitHub Actions, CircleCI, etc. Choose one that fits your team’s needs in terms of cost, ease of setup, support, and integrations.
For example, here’s how we used Travis CI with the Stickerfy project:
- Set up a
.travis.ymlfile to configure the test environment. - Specify the language (Node.js), services (like MongoDB), and any scripts to run.
- Push code to GitHub, and Travis automatically installs dependencies and runs tests.
CI brings automation into your everyday development process. Make sure it’s part of your workflow from the start.
4. Measure Code Coverage (But Don’t Obsess Over It)
Code coverage tells you what percentage of your codebase is exercised by automated tests. It can be helpful in spotting areas that need more attention.
Use tools like Istanbul/NYC for JavaScript projects to measure:
- Statement coverage
- Branch coverage
- Function and line coverage
These tools generate visual reports highlighting well-tested (green), moderately tested (yellow), and poorly tested (red) areas of your code.
However, coverage should be used as a guide, not a target. Chasing 100% coverage often leads to writing low-value tests just to hit a number. Focus on what matters: high-value scenarios that help catch real bugs.
5. Share Automation Wins
Want to get your team—and your company—excited about automation? Share success stories.
Here’s what to talk about:
- Bugs caught early: Show how automation prevented bugs from reaching production.
- Time saved: Quantify how much manual testing was avoided, or how much faster your team ships now.
- Better collaboration: Highlight how automation has helped devs, testers, and product managers work more closely together.
Data-backed wins make automation more relatable and appreciated across the org. They also help build the case for continued investment in automation tools and practices.
Wrapping Up
Adapting your automation strategy is just as important as building it. By maintaining standards, planning for maintenance, using CI, measuring intelligently, and sharing wins—you ensure your automation continues to deliver value as your product grows.
Remember: it’s not about writing more tests. It’s about writing the right ones—and keeping them effective over time.