Why should you move to Automation Testing?

Testing is an indispensable part of software development. Previously, most of the work were done by human; however, as technology progresses, more and more testing are needed that doing things manually proved to be a much less optimal way. A great amount of tasks are now being executed by machines, thanks to automation testing.

Let’s find out what automation testing is, and why many companies are now moving to automation testing.

Manual Testing’s limitations

Every software developer analyzes their creations, however, delivered software always has errors. Testers try to figure out them before the product release but they sometimes reappear, even though the best manual testing progresses.

Manual software testing is carried out by a person sitting in front of a computer carefully going through application screens, aiming at various usage and input combinations, assessing outcomes of the expected action, and logging these observations. Tests are redone often in the time of development cycles for source code adjustments; or other conditions such as changing operating environments or hardware configurations.

This use of Manual testing is resource-intensive while not being consistent and exposed to human errors; nowadays, automation is one of the best ways to increase effectiveness, efficiency and coverage of software testing.

Why move to Automation Testing?

Automation Testing?

Before getting to the the why of automation testing, let’s first briefly cover what it is and how it works.

As the name implies, testers write code or scripts to automate test execution in automation testing.

Tools are used to develop test scripts and validate the software. The process relies entirely on the prepared scripts that automatically compares actual results with expected ones. The tester will then have input to determine if the software is ready.

Better Return on Investment

First and foremost: the big initial investment. This may be an obstacle for many companies, but it is undeniable that the investment is both cost-effective and time-saving in the long run.

Testers often examine the software when change happens in order to monitor technical quality. Whenever there is update in the code, the software tests should be repeated. It may be analyzed on all operating systems and hardware configurations before each release of the software, which is costly and time-consuming.

When created, automated tests can be function and run over and over again at no additional fee. Moreover, these are much faster than normal tests. Automated software test application can shorten the time to run repetitive checks from days to hours.

That means time and resources saved converting directly into cost savings.

More consistent regression testing

Regression testing is the act of running old tests to ensure that the updated software haven’t introduced or re-introduced bugs.

The process is vital as it ensures that the validated features continue to function properly. Over time, the test suites built in this process will grow and the amount of repetitive work builds up.

Being able to automate this saves time and reduce the amount of human work dramatically. Decreasing the amount of manual work means decreasing human error, increasing in consistency; especially when it comes to large sets of tedious repeated work.

This means, not only does automation test reduce the cost of running test, but also ensures the quality of the testing process.

Test Coverage

Letting machine do the work also means extending the scope and depth of tests to ensure software quality.

Automation tools can execute thousands of different complex test cases, providing coverage that is previously impossible with manual tests. They can look inside an application and check memory contents, file contents, data tables and internal program states to determine if the product is behaving as expected.

Even the largest QA departments cannot execute a controlled web application testing with thousands of users. However, automation tools can help simulate these virtual users interacting with the network.

This means the testers can cover more possibilities, have better understanding of how the systems works, and later improve its performance.

Conclusion

Those are the reasons why automation testing is worth the investment.

To sum up, automated tests not only helps saving resources and improving quality, but it also provides added values for the stakeholders.

This automation trend seems lucrative; however, these could not be put into practice without relevant expertise. In order to get more know-how in the field, check out our automation testing service.

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