Test Automation – Is it the holy grail of product quality? Test automation is expensive and takes ages to justify the investments. Automation resources are top-heavy and would mean a lot of upfront costs. Product roadmap is not clearly defined and we aren’t sure if automation is appropriate for us? These are some of the initial reactions that we get to hear whenever we think of test automation. These reactions aren’t unfounded and it merits careful assessment. Some questions to consider before deciding to automate are: 1. Is your product fairly stable and do you have paying customers for its initial version? 2. Does the product have a clearly defined roadmap? 3. Does every version upgrade, both minor and major warrant running all the functional tests over and over again? Essentially, the test scripts would be re-used multiple times justifying the investments 4. Does your product have a number of test cases that need to be validated? If you answer yes to the above questions, then most likely, your product is a candidate for automation testing. Still, there are number of issues that need to be considered at the product level and also the larger objective of the organization before deciding to invest on automation. My next post will cover some of the good practices to automate your testing once a decision is made towards test automation. At Ivesia, we engage with our customers initially in consulting if automation is right for their needs, what percentage of testing can be automated, and what is the likely timeframe for a positive ROI? We do this because we understand that test automation is not a reversible process as it involves a lot of effort and budgets, and it has to be done carefully to achieve the desired benefits.
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