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Why Test Automation?

Why is test automation today implemented?

Test Automation is often implemented because:
- Can reduce testing time significantly,
- Can increase the test coverage massively,
- Runs many times faster than manual tests performed by a human user,
- Can be repeated as many times you want,
- Eliminates the risk of human errors,
- Can be reused for many different versions of the application,
- No more delayed releases because of less fixing bug before going live

Creating a Business Case for Test Automation

But even when the QA Team decides to use automation, they need a strong business case because the company needs to spend money in order to enable test automation. There are many different ways to do that. Here some thoughts how to begin

From the business perspective it is about:
- Save money in testing - Improve time-to-market - Free up your testers from tedious work
- Save time on manual testing
- Do more testing in less time
- Improve the software quality
- Increase the test coverage
- Earlier detection of bugs - Less bugs in production, what means a better customer journey as well as happy employees
- Risk reduction: Lower the risk of production showstoppers
- Improve test efficiency

Benefits / ROI for Test Automation

The strongest reasons are not enough, because you will need a ROI / Benefit calculation. But where to begin? Here some thoughts to build a strong business case:

  • Time to run all tests manually
  • Hourly rate per manual tester
  • The number of testers involved
  • The number of tests to execute manually
  • The number of release cycles per year: How often must be the manual test cases run?
  • Lowering the risk of application outages
  • Number of low/medium/critical bugs arrive today in production
  • How much time is spend on fixing the bugs
  • How many developers are involved
  • Hourly rate of a developer
  • Negative revenue impact on business
  • How many critical bugs (showstoppers) arrive in production today
  • Average time to fix a showstopper
  • Revenue impact per hour
  • Employees can´t work
  • Customer can´t use the application
  • Loss of Reputation