Benefits of Test Automation
- Saving time spent on test execution
- Increase in Test Coverage
- Sustained reliability despite repeated runs
- Reduced dependency on the QA team
To understand these benefits of test automation let us see how Test Automation helps its 3 main stakeholders – The developer, the Product Manager, and the CEO/CIO
Benefits of Test Automation for a Developer
If you are a developer practicing Test Driven Development, you write code till the test for the code passes. Once your code passes, does it means you were successful? Yes, but only at the functional level.
Now, as happens in all Products, changes are introduced. The impact of this can touch the UI, the database, and already written functions. This brings in the need for regression testing. For a quality-conscious developer who abhors that his code introduced bugs, an automated test suite will be a face-saver. Without the need of depending on QA to validate if his changes have not introduced bugs, he can run the regression test suite and fix issues, if any, right away.
Saves a great deal of time in the long run.
Benefits of Test Automation for a Product Manager
As a product manager, your responsibility is to deliver the product along with all its features within the committed timeline.
Now suppose a situation in which you are close to the final release. You have worked with your team for over 12 months and you are close to completion. Suddenly you realize that an important feature may have been missed. You rally your team around and make sure you deliver within the timeline. In the process, you may have to compromise on regression.
Keep in mind that whatever changes you make has cascading and often interrelated effects on other modules of your product. In addition, you don’t know if your developers didn’t do the basic checks in a hurry for the approaching deadline.
If you had planned on using test automation you could have easily accommodated QA without affecting the delivery date. You could have run regression automatically. Your developers could have used test scripts ensuring lesser regression and code quality issues. You could have also planned cross-platform automated testing.
Benefits of Test Automation for a CIO/CEO
As CIO/CEO you can actually reap the rewards of Automation in your organization. With Test Automation you can ensure that large parts of the organization (developers and product managers) are working efficiently. This could mean that they have enough time to come out with the best quality product. This could also mean your QA team had enough resources at their disposal to ensure that your product was of the highest quality.
You would have successfully reduced your dependency on your testing team and acquired artifacts (testing scripts) that will be of value for future releases of your software product.
Have questions about Automation Testing? Contact the software testing experts at InApp to learn more.
