What you need to know about test automation

Poor software quality causes image damage and loss of sales. Undoing this means extra effort and extra budget for your organization, something you want to avoid at all costs. An important question then is how to speed up your SDLC without losing quality? Test automation can be the answer, if applied correctly. It can be a smart investment for efficient software testing and thus better software quality.

Manual testing vs. test automation

Manual testing

If you are building a website or application that is not subject to change, then automation offers no added value. For a website that is built only once, manual testing is often sufficient. For a qualitative delivery of the final product, it’s important that you also pay attention to performance and security.

Test automation

When it comes to applications and platforms that are subject to change, automated testing does add value. Functional testing can be done a lot faster this way. Running your tests automated allows your team to focus on analyzing the results. In that case, test automation can greatly reduce test execution time. For existing applications where a large amount of time (and budget) is spent on manual testing, it can be useful to calculate the ROI for test automation and creating a Proof of Concept.

Start with the right strategy

Test automation should be done in a thoughtful way. You must have the right strategy, considering parameters such as technology, scope, budget, extensibility, maintainability, user technicality, architecture, … If not, budgets are used unnecessary and the goal is missed. Especially at the service layer (API), there is usually a high ROI.

We have noticed that automation is being used more often in recent years. In addition, it has already proven its worth on several occasions. Organizations that use it in the right way can no longer go without it.

A practical example

For example, a project where manual testing was done every two weeks. This for checking articles (products/services) and their associated status. Preparing the test data is not yet counted here. After they started with automation, execution time was reduced to two hours and more checks were done. Besides huge time savings, there were numerous other benefits:

• More flexibility in planning, team, …
• Increase in test coverage
• Reusability for different purposes (environments, code, …)
• Independent from, for example, disease team members
• Integration (CI/CD)
• Errors are found faster in the process
• Teamwork of testers and developers. They are more on the same wavelength

Test automation hand-in-hand with shift-left

The trend towards test automation has increased tremendously in recent years. Furthermore, the shift-left story is also gaining popularity. This approach involves starting testing as early as possible in the Software Development Lifecycle. In other words: test early and often. This is where automation can play an important role.