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It is important to understand your current testing structure prior to implementing automated testing. Do you have a dedicated software tester, or is the testing being done by the developers? If so, is that structure working for you? Make sure that testing responsibilities are in the most capable hands (with appropriate time on their schedules) before diving into automation.
Automating your testing offers many benefits:
Better Coverage of your Project
By allocating the time and resources to build automated tests, your testers will avoid spending time manually re-testing. This will increase your team’s efficiency by giving them more time to build even more automated tests for new features you are working on. A properly configured automated test suite also reduces the potential for human error that can happen during manual testing.
Reusing/Repurposing Tests Speeds up the Release Cycle
When complex automated tests are written it is likely that parts of those tests can be reused on similar features that don’t yet have test coverage. Identifying those features and adjusting an already existing automated test, helps to speed up the development cycle. A faster, more efficient development cycle with accurate automated tests means faster release dates for your product. In addition, the testers who develop these tests are building their skill set, which in turn increases efficiency for future projects.
Cost Savings
An automated test suite will take time and money to initially set up. However, the cost savings begin to materialize when you can re-use parts of previous tests and no longer need to allocate time and resources to create them.
Go Where Manual Testing Can’t Take You
In a typical manual test you have one tester simulating a user experience while they look for irregularities. An automated test doesn’t only need to simulate one user, it has almost unlimited potential to run concurrent tests of hundreds or thousands of users at once. This creates opportunities for load bearing tests that would be time consuming and costly to be run manually.
Simplifying the Defect Identification Process
During typical manual testing a bug or defect is discovered and a description of what happened is sent to the developer for fixing. In automated testing there are specific logs and tools that are run that help show the root cause of the issue. Sending a defect to a developer with a comprehensive explanation that includes insights into the internals of the issue will save time for the developer and the team.
Creating and maintaining a solid automated test suite takes both time and financial resources. However, it is easy to see how the benefits far outweigh this initial resource cost. Your developers will be happy they are getting a clearer idea of what needs to be fixed. Your testers are engaged by learning new programs and reducing repetitive manual test tasks. Most importantly, your product is held to a higher quality standard, while also being released to market quicker.