When a company decides to have automation test they need to have some ideas in mind:
- They don’t have an immediate benefit from automation
- The automation of all tests are not applied or wanted because in an automation process some classes of errors are lost;
- It is not possible to convert a manual test to an automated test without analyzing the test
- The tester needs time to plan the test;
- The initial time to select and learn the tool used in the process.
The reason the keep this post in mind is that automated tests only have benefits when executed many times.
The advantages of using this strategy is:
- Reduced test execution time and cost – The test can be executed automatically and the tester only needs to program or start the execution and analyze the results.
- Increased test coverage on each testing cycle – Automated tests can allow testing teams to execute far more tests than using the manual test approach.
- Increased value of manual testing effort: The automated test is never better than a manual test for finding errors. This cannot replace the tester as they only execute routine tasks so the tester can concentrate on finding new errors. An example of a regular type of an undiscovered error by the automation testing tools is usability.
- Reduced manual work: The test automation reduces repetitive manual work.
In automated testing there is an initial higher cost (effort) compared to the manual test, but as time progresses, the cost of an automated test is much lower than in manual testing.
For me, it is unbelievable when I hear people saying that manual testing is obsolete and they want all tests to be automated. The paradox of this type of thinking is that when we are always testing the same thing, we end up testing nothing and in fact we are regressing by not using other methods of testing. We cannot forget that the testing tools are blind even if there is another defect on the side, they will not be able to identify it. I believe in automation testing of course but always with a small part of manual testing.
