Making the decision

- [Presenter] Time is a critical component in product development. Whether your company is trying to hit the right window for a big release or you're an IT organization rolling out new software to internal teams, timelines often dictate the success or failure of a project. Quality testing is constantly pushed to deliver faster results to help keep timelines predictable and brief. Automation is often the most effective answer to the time question. It can deliver more consistent, faster results at a lower cost than manual testing. But you need to think about this decision from more than a time perspective. There are other factors that can impact your testing and quality results. You need to understand what the quality process you're seeking to automate does and how it impacts the quality of the product. The question isn't whether it can be automated, but whether it should be automated. Consider what you might lose if you hand your work off to a computer. Today's tools are innovative enough that automation can work for almost any manual process. However, testing isn't always black and white. Sometimes a human is needed in the process to differentiate between what is functional and what really works. Computers don't care about things like the user interface, customer experience and expectations. You'll need to define the spaces where you only need binary results and where you need a human touch. It's only natural to want to optimize your manual processes. It's the logical progression in any process to find better ways to accomplish tasks. Automation of some tests is an inevitable conclusion for efficiency. The reality is unless your product is unbelievably simple, it's unlikely you can do everything you need to do testing manually and deliver your product on time. However, decisions and automation always need to be balanced by the angle of your testing. Will the automation help deliver a product the customer wants to use? As you move through each manual test process, consider where the eyes of the tester add value and where they don't. Only consider automating tests where you can get the benefits of speed and accuracy without sacrificing the importance of usability.