Automation testing – the balance between benefit and cost

Following up my last article about  Quality Control I’ve decided to make a brief overview of the automation testing. Hereafter I would like to specify its impact on the quality of operating processes as well as the product.

It so happens that testing is considered to be the only part of the delivery cycle resistant to speed. The manual testing to be clear. Agile project management  might have rushed the team’s delivery cycle, but it can’t speed up the human testers to match.

Undoubtedly, the manual testing offers some advantages like flexibility, lower short-term cost and immediate results. However, when it comes to the moderately big projects where time is essential and should turn attention to the automation testing. Let me explain why, From between iteration, test engineers shall perform the same regression test suites for existing functionality. Manually repeating these tests is pricey and time-sapping.

Automated software testing is a process where in the software tools execute pre-scripted tests on a software application. It performs running, initialization, execution, analysis and delivery of results automatically.

      Implementation of automated software testing is a multistep process which includes:

1.     Setting goals, vision, high-level needs.
2.  Selection of  testing types (Smoke, Regression, etc.) and approach (Graphical user interface testing or API driven testing).
3.     Definition of  scope to be automated.
4.     Selection of  automation test tools and technologies.
5.     Development of the test automation framework and test data preparation.
6.     Automated test run deployment.
7.     Setup of useful reports.
8.     Support.

In the context of Quality Assurance, the automated software testing has the following advantages:  

1. Rapid execution – test automation can perform a number of different test cases of various complexity during every test run. It provides the achievable coverage of the manual testing.
2. Repeatability –  once created, automated tests are no longer strapped by the human element  and can repeatedly  during the development cycles without further assistance.
3. Performance without involvement – monotonous manual testing gets the most conscientious tester to slip up while the automated tests perform the same steps precisely every time they are run and provide detailed recorded results.
4. Deployment process improvement – automation testing can be built in the Continuous Integration system to provide an opportunity to test performances whenever the code is changed . Therefor, the QA engineer is not doomed to burn time on broken builds but receives application builds  that  undergo  preliminary tests.

Summarizing the things mentioned above, the repetitive tests should run every time the source code is modified. Also, during development cycles,  it is reasonable to save time on automation testing and translate it directly to the cost savings. Lastly, take my tip and perform ROI calculation as well as check project’s readiness for the automated testing implementation to avoid the

I hope this article will be useful to those who are starting out with test automation.  If there are any questions or suggestions for future posts you are free to contact us via emaill: marketing@Syntegrico.com.

Eugene Kunda
Head of QA Department at Syntegrico