A Short Guide to Maximizing Test Automation for Higher ROI 

Speed and quality are the bywords for an effective digital product or service, more so now than ever before. The only way to achieve ROI is by delivering quality products in the quickest way possible if we want to exceed customer expectations. In this digital era, complete test automation makes exemplary and fast delivery possible.

Automation testing ensures the elimination of time-consuming manual testing, human errors, and continuous and integrated testing. In short, automation testing revolves around a customer-centric approach, delivering products and services even as they evolve with new features.

Continuous Delivery Through Test Automation

Frequent and continuous test automation that includes regression, performance, and acceptance testing is the only way to ensure that bugs and defects are identified and eliminated quickly so that the product is ready for delivery and fastener to market. Continuous testing also brings the testing team and the stakeholders to a collaborative phase as they need to work together to improve the overall experience for the end-user.

test automation services

As the SDLC continues to evolve based on new industry standards, the testing process must embrace data-driven testing. Such testing includes pre-planned test cases that improve the product’s development phase. A complete automation testing process requires strategic planning at the business level by envisioning the testing scenarios and planning the test scripts and test cases in a continuous testing framework before starting the development phase.

Importance of Test Automation Frameworks

Test automation frameworks are based on framework compatibility, i.e., the success of test automation implementation depends on the level of test scenarios and scripts, along with compatibility and scalability tests. Business level planning must include test automation tools and the right framework leading to continuous integrated automated testing. And it requires insight into potential outcomes and benefits. Investments in automation testing may be high, but the ROI can be rewarding.

Therefore, the initial planning must consider a thorough analysis of incurred costs, savings after the deployment, the break-even point, and a comparison between manual and automated testing.

How To Optimize Test Automation?

Every type of business enterprise has an eye on maximizing ROI while maintaining a competitive edge in the market. Without a doubt, digital transformation and automated testing go hand in hand towards more significant business growth. However, certain factors come into play to make a success of implementing test automation in product development:

Vision

Test automation aims to avoid using the wrong test cases at the wrong stage and using automated testing when manual testing is required. So envisioning test automation results at each phase of the SDLC beforehand is imperative. The vision must include browser testing, hardware, device compatibilities, and scalability for test automation to be effective.

Test design

Creating a robust and effective test design before development can boost the ROI. The right test design would provide comprehensive code coverage with fewer tests and the shortest time, thereby helping define functional and non-functional software requirements under production.

Test data

Automation testing is data-driven. Gathering relevant data is essential to make the testing effective. Test data can include valid data, invalid data, boundary conditions, source, nature, etc.

Cloud testing

Moving the testing to the cloud is more efficient as testing on-premises would be more expensive. On-premises testing would require the necessary infrastructure and would have to consider testing across devices, platforms, browsers, frequent security, and OS updates and can prove harder to keep up and maintain. Cloud testing services offer a more cost-effective solution.

Test automation frameworks

Choosing the correct type of automation framework is critical before testing. A continuous testing framework provides testing platforms for device and browser testing even as it keeps the workload and amount of data involved in the testing process. Moreover, the continuous testing framework can handle additional language testing with the required translations. It can analyze the entire solution for successful product development and increased ROI.

test automation

How Do You Measure ROI On Test Automation? 

One of the most basic measuring ROI on test automation is calculating the time saved. For instance, writing test cases and performing manual testing would naturally take more time than using automation testing tools. Moreover, correcting errors made through manual testing can add to the time taken in the testing process, which can be removed through automation.

However, there is more to measuring ROI. 

  • The number of tests doesn’t remain the same as new features are added. The ROI would have to include how the tests change through development and after. Apart from writing new tests, the existing tests may need work to suit the new code based on the changing test scenarios.
  • Hiring new automation test engineers or retraining the existing QA team will also add to the costs you need to factor in when calculating the ROI when moving to automation testing.
  • Add in the costs of releasing a product with a few bugs in the product. QA is a big part of the SDLC. Manual testing cannot discover and eliminate the bugs in production. On the other hand, automation ensures that everything is tested continuously and consistently, resulting in zero to minimal bugs.
  • You cannot measure ROI without considering the scalability of testing solutions. Transitioning to a work-from-home model due to the COVID-19 pandemic has brought communication tools to the forefront. This transition has proved that tools such as Zoom or Slack have handled increasing user volume. Their success lies in having been tested using an automation framework.

By leveraging test automation, enterprises can anticipate their scaling needs and address the product delivery to enhance customer satisfaction. And, with improved customer satisfaction, you have a higher ROI in the long term, recovering the initial costs in implementing automation testing in no time.

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