Software development has lot of methodologies and standardized approaches to make the development process efficient such as object oriented programming, domain-driven design, test-driven design and behaviour driven design etc. Automation testing, since the very beginning, has been relatively new when it comes to processes and standards. But now it has gained lot of exposure in terms of standardization and has been under the process of continuous improvement and evolvement through design patterns. Automation testing is a process of developing software to test software. Hence, the test patterns are loosely similar to design patterns that are used in software development.

Design patterns show how to design the test automation testware so that it will be efficient and easy to maintain. The most challenging part in test automation has always been the code maintenance. A lot of test automation projects have drowned or were scrapped due to the inability of the frameworks to cope up with the growing codebases. In order to keep the maintenance cost low, the automation engineers should strive to minimize the code that they reinvent or create from scratch by using existing functionality for common, generic, or repeated operations.

What are the types of Design Patterns in test automation?

1. Design Patterns in Test implementation
From the test implementation perspective, different design patterns can be understood as types of automation frameworks (illustrated in Figure 1):

2. Architectural Design Patterns

3. Functional Design Patterns

What are the advantages of using Design Patterns?

The use of design patterns offers below advantages:
– Low maintenance effort and time
– Low maintenance cost
– Enhanced code reusability
– Enhanced reliability
– Structured codebase which is easy to fix and extend
–  Improved communication

Conclusion

The design patterns contribute to a major chunk in defining the test automation best practices. The bene- fits of test automation cannot be reaped effectively without implementing the required design patterns specific to a test automation project.