Why Implement Test Automation Tools?
If you currently perform manual software regression testing for each product release, have a large number of tests that need to be executed for each release, and you have frequent product releases then this is an ideal situation to make use of a test automation tool.
Manual software regression testing is an inefficient use of a test analyst’s time, especially if they are merely repeating documented tests. You can reduce your test cycle times and improve the accuracy of your testing by letting a software test automation tool execute these tests instead.
How to Start – The “Ad Hoc” Approach
So let’s assume you purchase a software automation tool for the test analysts to use but you find things do not go as you expected:
- Some analysts do not want to use the tool to automate their tests preferring to keep on testing manually.
- Some analysts give up using the tool, but some users are using the tool successfully.
- After the several releases the application has changed and a significant number of automated test scripts need to be updated.
- The tool was expensive to purchase and so much time and resources are being used to maintain the automated test scripts it seems the tool is of marginal benefit.
This is a small sample of the problems that are likely to occur when you attempt to adopt a software test automation tool in to your organization in an ad hoc manner.
A Better Approach – “Plan – Do – Check – Act”
When you adopt any tool into your organization you intend to improve your current process but remember you are also changing the current process and this can be problematic.
Quality assurance and quality control people have developed a system that can make changes like these less problematic. It is an ideal way to adopt test automation into your organization.
This system consists of four steps, plan-do-check-act (PDCA).