Your testing team never slouches, but you always seem to find a bunch of defects in production regardless. But while improving your test coverage, speed, and accuracy is an obvious solution, it’s always seemed prohibitively expensive. With test automation, however, your solution isn’t just affordable—it can cut your budget in half!
ROI
Let’s face it: business applications aren’t getting any less complex, and customers aren’t going to lower their digital expectations any time soon. There’s a new king in the IT world—quality.
Let’s face it: everyone knows that test automation offers considerable benefits, including increased coverage, accuracy, and speed. But it all comes at a cost: the price of ramp up—which covers tool licenses, hiring test automation engineers, and other related expenses. As IT budgets tighten, is test automation the key to doing more with less, or just another costly boondoggle?
It’s easy to get seduced by the results of test automation—faster testing, increased coverage, improved accuracy, a high ROI. But in doing so, we must be cautious not to create unrealistic expectations—after all, test automation is as much about the journey as it is the destination.
Whether you’re building your initial business case, calculating your ROI, or kicking off your first project, estimating the complexity of each test case you’re going to automate can be a real pain—which can make it near impossible to accurately scope your effort. Fortunately, all you need to do is remember 60-30-10.
When it comes to test automation, a lot of companies tend to pick tools that are readily available to them—as opposed to the ones that align best with their strategy. But there’s one factor that’s just as important: making sure their developers can actually support it. And make no mistake—they’re harder to find than you think.
When it comes to software testing, most folks think they can’t have inexpensive, fast, and high quality all at once. And while that may be true for traditional testing, there is a way to have it all: test automation.
Software testing/quality assurance initiatives are often the first things cut from an encumbered budget. But, as expenses mount and software projects fail, many companies find themselves asking, “Was this really the right move?” Are these companies costing themselves more by doing so?
If you have a large testing need, there’s no question that test automation can probably net you a pretty significant ROI—heck, it can potentially cut your testing budget in half! Unfortunately, many companies fail to do that. In the end, your success—or failure—with test automation all comes down to one thing: a sound strategy.
Let’s face it: your subject matter experts (SMEs) aren’t cheap. And every time you use them for testing, you’re squandering their skills for a task that could be performed by a far-cheaper software tester. But how do you get a tester to emulate your SMEs’ business-savvy? Simple—you get a computer to do it instead.
