I wanted to talk about this for a while as Organizations/Individuals want to leverage test automation but fail to strategize in the test planning so that we could take the advantage of test automation. In this article, I want to talk about the few points that any organization or individual should consider when they are planning to automate and want to take actual advantage of it.
Let’s talk about When to Automate Tests. To determine when we should automate, let’s take another approach, where we will chalk out some points related to when we should not automate. By doing this, we will be using the method of elimination and then will reach to a conclusion where we can confidently say, Yes, we can begin the automation now. Following are the few “Yes” or “No” questions which will help us identify.
Do you have the budget for automation?
Automation is not free. It requires skilled people, tools, and infrastructure. Determining the cost of each item is necessary when you are planning to automate. This will of course vary based on the size of the application and the extent to which you are planning to automate. For example, organizations may only want to automate the smoke or sanity test and thus do not require much infrastructure in place compared to fully automating and running the tests.
Do you have resources for automation?
For all mature automation to run, we need machines, and even before that, we need a tool and people who have the skills to automate. Remember, a person who knows how to automate does not mean that he would also know what is the best way to automate. However, people who are automation experts will come with a cost. Similarly, unless you are using free automation tools like selenium, you need to purchase a test automation tool. Cloud computing has significantly reduced the cost of infrastructure, however, understanding the modern cloud providers like Google or Amazon, will further enhance the cost efficiency and reduce the execution time.
Do you have detailed test scripts/steps of manual test cases?
Do not start automation unless you have a narration of the test. That means the test steps need to be written in a very clear manner such that anyone can follow them and do the manual testing.
Has your management approved the automation?
Individuals working in the testing team have a strong feeling about adopting test automation because it’s a buzzword for the tester community and every QA wants to upskill themselves and learn test automation by automating their current testing. However, they fail to show the true benefit of automation in terms of dollars saved to management and thus, do not get support from the management to automate. I see many people switching the organization just because their management is not interested in automation and the QAs feel that they are not able to upskill themselves. However, they act smartly, they can convince the management to invest in automation by showing the real cost-saving via automation.
Have you done the cost-benefit analysis for automation?
This is the most important part and many of the testers fail to do so. You can read this article for doing the cost-benefit analysts of test automation. Remember, the customer only pays for the product with value.