During recent years in development, the ability to deliver rapidly has increased, which brings greater attention to test automation.
Questioning the product has never been more important as it enables the possibility to figure out what could go wrong already at an early stage and to come up with the solutions to solve the problems that may potentially arise. Although it has become a recommended practice to automate tests, the fact remains that manual tests are, in many cases, preferred over automated tests. In this blog post, let’s take a closer look at some of the greatest benefits of test automation.
Today, there is a bigger focus on finding errors early in the development chain, which means that the person(s) responsible in QA needs to have full control over how he/she should think about tests.
Having tests at all levels simplifies the process of finding an error in a system, which facilitates troubleshooting and makes it faster for us to find the problem. Faster processes and fewer errors – automation is simply a smart way to work more efficient. Providing quick feedback about changes in functionality or even changes in the system can streamline the release of new functionalities, with the assurance that the business-critical flows still work.
Today, development keeps a dynamic pace where new builds are built, or even delivered, several times a day, and thus there lies great expectations to do testing at the same pace. This can take a toll on a tester’s work with exploratory testing being the only hope.
Automation gives us the ability to quickly get feedback on a system’s status and whether something has broken or not. Machines perform operations faster and can do things that we humans can’t do at all, such as simulating thousands of simultaneous users in a controlled test system.
Faster feedback gives a simplified process, which ultimately results in better and faster product delivery.
Another major advantage of test automation is making resources more available for spending time on other quality work. Less hours doing overtime gives the opportunity to work on value-creating tasks. Instead of extensive, time-consuming and often monotonous regression tests, we can gain deeper insight into new areas as well as known problem areas. With that in mind, you’ll also have more time for exploratory testing. The more time we get to explore the system, the more we can learn and the easier it is to make well-informed decisions. The employees thus find the work less stressful, more interesting, and the workplace more attractive.
While test automation is good in many ways, human testing must never be forgotten. It is just as important and therefore a combined use of them both is always the best practice.
When users demand new functionality and bug fixes to be delivered faster and faster the need to automate tests increases at a more rapid pace. Today, test automation is a resourceful aid that can complement manual testing, and an important tool to use in our test kit when it comes to the constant search for better quality. We have a lot to gain by automating at least parts of our testing – faster deliveries, higher quality and happier employees are some of them.