Testing has evolved through the years from being a process to ensure quality to a more critical arena. Today, accurate testing translates to a proactive approach that doesn’t just highlight current problem areas but also identifies potential bugs that may appear in the future. It is directed to helping engineers ensure quality in the development itself, to further decrease testing time and accelerate the time-to-market.
Test automation is one such stream that leverages AI-based tools to execute system testing, save the data and ensure reporting and analytics to improve the process further.
Owing to the wide range of benefits it offers, test automation is emerging as a preferred choice of businesses, regardless of their size. It is estimated that the automation testing market size is predicted to grow from USD 20.7 billion to USD 49.9 billion by 2026, at CAGR of 19.2% during the forecast period.
However, enterprises and SMBs are not yet ensured of how they can drive full value from their investment in test automation.
How Does Automation Add Value?
Test automation enables businesses to ensure quality custom software development process. Let’s see what distinctive value it delivers to the businesses:
- It helps enhance the speed of software development to boost time-to-market.
- Test automation allows testing teams to get early feedback and therefore, eliminate the bugs that could occur. This decreases the risk associated with software development.
- Tests can be executed multiple times without increasing the cost of resources.
- It allows system-wide testing to identify and set benchmarks.
- Enables you to schedule tests even out of office hours.
- Ensure realistic stress and load testing to ensure seamless experience for users.
- Drive faster time to market
- Improve overall software quality
- Increase test reliability, especially during regression testing
- Validate software platforms through various phases and codes
- Shorten feedback cycles
- Identify application errors in the early stages of software development
Also Read: Automation Testing for Mobile Applications: A Guide to Ensuring Quality and Efficiency
6 Recommendations for Driving Business Value from Test Automation
1. Define Your Custom Software Development Goals Clearly
Every investor has a range of benefits they want to achieve from custom software development initiatives. For instance, an organization that relies on manual work wants to automate their processes. An organization looking for mobile app development might want to reach more customers, automate the sales channel, market its business, or make the products easily accessible to potential buyers. Similarly, each software development initiative has its own set of goals. While one brand may be trying to achieve one thing, another may be wanting functionalities to deliver other benefits via the development of similar software.
To ensure that test automation delivers value for your business, you need to ensure that you communicate your goals clearly to the custom software development company you hire. Having the basic idea of why you are investing in test automation will help your QA teams to create test cases and execute them in a way that all your conditions are met.
2. Identify What to Automate and What Not to Automate
A Software is a mix of multiple modules and not every aspect of it has to be automated. Test automation does not completely eliminate the need for manual testing. It is rather an extension of manual testing that helps you ensure manual testing is delivering results for your custom software development.
For example, the usability of the application can be tested manually. Humans will be able to test the usability aspect from the user’s perspective, rather than a machine helping you to do so. This said you don’t need to conduct test automation to check the usability of the application. It is always better to list down all the features of the application and have a thorough discussion about which aspects should be executed for test automation.
Read More: Test Automation- What is it and How does it Help You with Better Digital Transformation?
3. Focus on High-Value Tests
Test automation is a continuous process, rather than a one-time thing. As the software features evolve through the custom app development lifecycle, there are chances that aspects such as GUI need constant updates. These updates might impact the application performance in the long run, causing multiple re-works. However, if GUI is not tested well, it may lead to bugs with ongoing usage, causing the entire application to deliver a disappointing user experience.
If not automated, multiple testing at the same time can consume the time of resources as well as add to the cost of application testing. This impacts overall investment in the application development, therefore nulling the entire significance of quality analysis.
Similarly, QA teams need to ensure that such high-value features are well prioritized and tested regularly in order to ensure seamless application experience. One can list down all the functionalities of the software and prioritize them based on their value. Once done, they can create test cases for the most critical ones and execute them using automation.
4. Keep Scope for Regular Maintenance
Test automation is not a sprint, it is a marathon. Test cases once written may deliver incorrect results with more functionalities implemented. Without the right way to identify these issues, it can lead to system failure over time due to lack of accurate test cases. At the same time, resources will have to spend more time digging to the error source, costing you in terms of revenue and time-to-market.
The best approach is to ensure that your QA teams keep a scope for regular maintenance of the test cases. New scripts may be needed for the new features and directions. Teams constantly need to ensure that the tests are effective and meet the target for which they have been written.
5. Ensure Seamless Data Retrieval and Management
Business-critical applications require testing teams to plan and manage test data. Mishandling this data can cause a severe impact on the quality of custom software development and impact the test coverage. Ensure that your team has adequate resources to retrieve and manage the test data after each test cycle. Have a scope for secure data storage with version history.
This data can come in handy when you want to identify the source of bugs and help boost application’s time-to-market.
6. Choose the Right Test Automation Tools
There is a wide range of test automation tools available on the market. While one tool may offer set of advantages over the other, that doesn’t guarantee their success for your project. Make sure you invest in the test automation tool that brings value for your project. Here is how to choose the best test automation tool for your custom software development project:
- Make sure you understand the project requirement and what aspects need test automation.
- Consider existing test automation tool as benchmark and how the alternative is supposed to add more value to the project development.
- Identify the criteria corresponding to the project such as:
- Ease of script development and maintenance
- Ease of test execution for non-technical users
- Support to the different application types
- Test reporting and analytics
- Support to the types of testing
- Technology support
- Pricing
Read More: Why Does Your Enterprise Need Test Automation?
Build Quality Software Solutions with Matellio!
Accelerate time-to-market for your digital products without compromising the quality of software solutions with our Automation testing services. Our certified testing experts help you launch products that deliver exceptional speed and unmatchable experience across devices and platforms. We are pioneers in delivering an extensive range of automation testing services, including:
| Automated Functional Testing | Feature testing, Full system testing, Regression testing, and Unit testing. |
| Automated Performance Testing | Load testing, Stress testing, Stability testing, and Scalability testing. |
| Automated Integration Testing | Incremental testing, Top-down integration testing, Bottom-up integration testing, and Hybrid/Sandwich integration testing. |
| Automated Compatibility Testing | Browser compatibility testing, Application compatibility testing, Software and hardware compatibility testing, Version compatibility testing, and forward and backward compatibility testing. |
| Automated Software Security Assurance | Vulnerability Assessment, Penetration testing, Infrastructure security audit, and Compliance testing. |
Are you looking for a custom test automation quote or do you want to upgrade your manual testing process with us? Share your requirements and book yourself a Free 30-minute consultation.
