RIGHT Blogs                                                              

Test Automation – Do you have the business case?

Test Automation is increasingly becoming a key phase in the testing life cycle. Driven significantly by the time, cost and quality components, companies have recognized the benefits it offers. Faster time-to-market, reduced testing cycle time, lower testing costs and maximized test coverage are a few benefits that companies look for from test automation.

Investment in test automation cannot be driven solely by these benefits. Companies need to have the business case to support such long term investments. They need to assess if the yields generated from the automation projects do justify the investment made. Test automation will have high initial outlays while the returns won’t be seen for another 1-3 years, depending on the projects. Without a good business case for test automation, companies cannot aim to earn the ROI from such investments.

The key considerations for test automation business case will include:

1. Product roadmap and the development approach –

a. An understanding of the product development roadmap

b. Age of the product

c. Maintenance requirements

d. Scope for frequent changes

e. Number of releases planned

f. Release schedule of the various applications to be tested

g. Insight on the scope for regression testing over a period of time.

Getting the answers to the above list will aid in presenting a good scenario for product testing to encompass test automation.

2. Requirements that are to be tested – Based on an understanding of the requirements and the time available for testing you will also be able to understand the level of test coverage that can be be automated.

3. Requirement for manual testing – One goal in test automation, is to reduce the manual testing effort and accelerate the time to market. It is then important to know the level of manual testing effort that will be required in conjunction with test automation.

4. Technology – Equally important will be an understanding of the technology roadmap, the usage of open source software, the number of languages, browsers and configurations that are to be tested. The technology used in the development of the application has a critical bearing on the level of support one can expect from the automation tool. Companies should perform an extensive assessment of the automation tool by examining several parameters with respect to its support across browsers, UI objects, scripting languages, etc.

5. Composite applications to be tested – Upfront knowledge on the test automation for composite applications will provide good insights on the various functional and non-functional automation requirements. Feasibility analysis of a test automation tool and tool sourcing, possibility of building composite test suites and reusable components can be well planned in advance.

6. Resource skills - The skills of the staff and the time required for training resources is another key consideration for automation projects. Availability of staff with the requisite skill set and expertise in test automation will not always be easy to find. Training resources could be a good option, but even then, it is resources with development background that will be able to ramp-up faster to the automation tools and techniques. The level of support provided by the tool vendor will also need to be considered before embarking on test automation.

A final thought is that while building the business case, it could be worthwhile to understand the organization wide requirement. Automation is usually not worth the effort for a small project. Automation requirements arise across various business divisions. A well planned schedule for automation across the organization can bring about optimized usage of the automation resources and tools. Strategic guidance and IT consulting will help harmonize the testing requirements and may also bring forth a business case for an automation test center of excellence (TCOE). (TCOE). Such TCoE will bring about standardization of processes, templates, and training apart from access to skilled pool of resources internally and optimization of the tool costs. TCoE further ascertains the long-term business case for automation in organizations.