Why Automate?

Every software development group tests its products, yet delivered software always has defects. Test engineers strive to catch them before the product is released but they always creep in and they often reappear, even with the best manual testing processes. Test Automation software is the best way to increase the effectiveness, efficiency and coverage of your software testing.

This area in development is surrounded by a lot of myths. Most often, a business that turns to automation believes:

1. It will solve all the problems of high-quality software release;  
2. It will allow you to get rid of manual testing;  
3. It is necessary simply because it is a “cool trend”;  
4. It will speed up the release;  
5. It will increase the coverage of platforms and versions of operating systems during testing.

Obviously, the first three statements are controversial: to ensure the quality of an IT product, it is important to consider many aspects, and not just test automation.

In turn, the last two statements are true: competent test automation helps both in accelerating releases and increasing case coverage. At the same time, manual testing and automation, as a rule, are equally important and are used in combination. In addition, each project is individual, and sometimes there is no need for automation.

When automation is required:  

• Large-scale application with many business functions
• A significant lifetime of the application (from 1 year or more)
• Implementation of CI/CD, regular releases, and a small number of QA specialists  
  Source: https://spincareer.com/why-do-we-want-to-automate-manual-testing-in-qa

Automation helps to build balance by:

• manually testing what requires human attention (as a rule, up to 25% of cases);  
• automating the rest of the cases.

At the same time, automation in the long term reduces both testing costs and risks associated with the human factor.

In addition, releases can be accelerated if needed. For example, if you need to check about 500 cases, then their manual testing will take up to three weeks, and automated tests can be carried out at night and analyzed in 5 hours. 

Which tests need to be automated in the first place depends on the characteristics of a particular product. Most companies automate smoke tests, regression tests to check ready-made functionality, as well as cases to check various parameters (for example, valid and invalid data during registration).  

Manual software testing is performed by a human sitting in front of a computer carefully going through application screens, trying various usage and input combinations, comparing the results to the expected behavior and recording their observations. Manual tests are repeated often during development cycles for source code changes and other situations like multiple operating environments and hardware configurations.

An automated testing tool is able to playback pre-recorded and predefined actions, compare the results to the expected behavior and report the success or failure of these manual tests to a test engineer. Once automated tests are created they can easily be repeated and they can be extended to perform tasks impossible with manual testing. Because of this, savvy managers have found that automated software testing is an essential component of successful development projects.

Automated Testing Saves Time and Money     

Software tests have to be repeated often during development cycles to ensure quality. Every time source code is modified software tests should be repeated. For each release of the software it may be tested on all supported operating systems and hardware configurations. Manually repeating these tests is costly and time consuming. Once created, automated tests can be run over and over again at no additional cost and they are much faster than manual tests. Automated software testing can reduce the time to run repetitive tests from days to hours. A time savings that translates directly into cost savings.

Vastly Increases Your Test Coverage   

Automated software testing can increase the depth and scope of tests to help improve software quality. Lengthy tests that are often avoided during manual testing can be run unattended. They can even be run on multiple computers with different configurations. Automated software testing can look inside an application and see memory contents, data tables, file contents, and internal program states to determine if the product is behaving as expected. Test automation can easily execute thousands of different complex test cases during every test run providing coverage that is impossible with manual tests.

Testing Improves Accuracy     

Even the most conscientious tester will make mistakes during monotonous manual testing. Automated tests perform the same steps precisely every time they are executed and never forget to record detailed results. Testers freed from repetitive manual tests have more time to create new automated software tests and deal with complex features.

Automation Does What Manual Testing Cannot       

Even the largest software and QA departments cannot perform a controlled web application test with thousands of users. Automated testing can simulate tens, hundreds or thousands of virtual users interacting with a network, software and web applications.

Automated Testing Helps Developers and Testers       

Shared automated tests can be used by developers to catch problems quickly before sending to QA. Tests can run automatically whenever source code changes are checked in and notify the team or the developer if they fail. Features like these save developers time and increase their confidence.

QA and Dev Team Morale Improves      

This is hard to measure but we’ve experienced it first hand. Executing repetitive tasks with automated software testing gives your team time to spend on more challenging and rewarding projects. Team members improve their skill sets and confidence and, in turn, pass those gains on to their organization.

Summing up     

The balance of manual and automated testing allows you to constantly monitor the quality of an IT product. Some projects are checked manually, while other tasks can be better solved using automation. Manual testing is used when people are irreplaceable, for example, if localization is needed, error descriptions, manual usability testing. In small projects, tests are often written by the developers themselves.

Manual testing in combination with automation is carried out when creating large IT products, where several teams work (for example, in banking applications) and there are complex algorithms and business logic. This method helps to streamline product testing processes and reduce the risk of costly errors, which is especially important when working with a tight release schedule.