subject: Automation and Manual Testing- Mix them right [print this page] Automation and Manual Testing- Mix them right
Enterprises turn to automation due to plenty of reasons like to reduce costs, save time, increase repeatability of test execution, and effectively utilize resources. According to Forrester, test automation is the creation and execution of scripts that run functional test cases and report test results without human assistance. Software test automation can benefit in many ways such as speed up the test case implementation, create reusable test suites, ease report generation, and record test results.
Today, enterprises are under extreme pressurize to release software sooner, build quality by increasing test coverage, and reduce the amount of time and effort, and all these can be achieved by automating testing efforts. For instance, software once developed may go through several versions, and test scripts created once can be reused with the help of test automation, which reduces considerable amount of time and effort. Automation also helps QA teams to effectively plan test cycles by measuring the risk of test requirements.
Though automation offers several benefits, it is not suitable in all the cases. A case in point, if the application changes are minor and can be quickly tested manually, then there is no point in using automating testing, or an application that is in its early stages of development may undergo many modifications to the test scripts, so it is not advisable to implement automation till the test scripts are stabilized. Apart from the use case, there are several other factors to be considered such as, test automation requires considerable amount of investments in time, money and resources, all automation tools do not support all technologies, and the business value that can be derived out of automation.
Now that automation is not the right fit for all the environments and test cases, more effort in automating testing should be put only where it is worth it. Enterprises should first plan their testing efforts to identify what to automate, how much to automate, and when to automate, and then focus higher risk areas, and higher complexity applications through manual testing. The trick in the success of enterprises' testing efforts lies on how well they set in place a right mix of automation and manual testing.
