The Benefits of Test Automation in Business

Software Quality is an important aspect in the welfare of an organization. By automating necessary and repetitive testing tasks, organizations can benefit in many number of ways. Still, it is given lesser priority with minimal investment in technology, training and processes which can ensure the quality of the software.

The business benefits of maintaining software quality throughout all the phases of application development are both deep and wide. Embarking on a program of continuous quality control always keeps costs less than that required for fixing them later on. Deploying software test automation solutions have a significant positive effect on testing time scales. Let us review these business benefits in detail.

• Relieves testing bottlenecks: Testing usually takes up to 40% of the total development time. Once automated tests are set up, they take lesser time to complete than manual tests with effective results. These tests can be run unattended and hence can be executed over holidays and weekends and results can be analyzed later on. Thus, more tests are completed in lesser time.
• Reduces overall testing costs: With more tests being covered in lesser time and effort, the costs required for testing are reduced as a result.
• Increased code coverage: As more tests are covered in lesser time, a higher level of code coverage can be achieved than manual testing. Thus, more features can be tested and the tests conducted are more in-depth. This results in higher quality software and satisfied customers.
• Increased credibility in the market: With satisfied customers, the goodwill of the organization spreads at a steady rate. Potential customers who depend more on the reviews and experience of their peers and friends are more likely to consider the organization for their projects. Thus, increased software quality, lesser turnaround time and satisfied customers help to retain existing customers and gain new ones.
• Reassign resources: Automating testing helps to free up a significant amount of the testers time. Thus, they can be either reassigned to other projects or engaged into more indepth testing, which further ensures robustness of the application.
• Application scalability of the software: For some applications, it is necessary to perform load and stress testing on them. Replicating the performance of such applications under extreme stress helps to avoid machine overloads, unnecessary infrastructure investments and implementation of enhancements. Being able to simulate such extreme conditions is highly unlikely for any organization. Automated tests help in this regard which ensures that when he code is put live, there will be no surprises caused by the full production load.
• Data Management and Security: Effective testing depends on the quality of test data used. Automation solutions help with creating, manipulating and protecting test database, allowing the re-use of data time and again.
• Consistent and thorough testing: With test automation, tests can be recorded and reused. This enables each and every test to be run with consistently with equal efficiency regardless of who executed them.

Conclusion

There are numerous benefits of test automation. But it is still not used widely. The reasons are unique to each organization. By automating the key areas of testing, organizations can benefit huge reductions, downtime and inefficiencies. This also improves, quality, and the time to market of their application development program.

Michael works for Cigniti Technologies, which is the world's first Independent Software Testing Company to be appraised at CMMI-SVC Level 5, and an ISO 9001:2008 & ISO 27001:2013 certified organization.