Automated tests for your business clients

If you’ve spent time on a project, you know that Testers and Quality Engineers are an invaluable asset. Chances are you’re also familiar with what are automated tests. But perhaps you’re still not sure why you should spend money on a person who will prepare test automation for your software. Can’t see the ROI? Then, keep reading to find out about the qualitative and quantitative benefits of automated testing. If implemented successfully, test automation is priceless when it comes to cost and time savings, allowing you to move swiftly with the development phase!

Benefits of test automation

Investing time now in automated testing will pay off in the future

Let us start with the critical values of test automation for your business. Indeed, the key factor is the time to the release of the product. Sales, marketing campaigns, and many others depend on the timely submission of the software. But what if you encounter some difficulties that double the time needed to finish the product? That’s when automation testing technology comes in handy!

Using any of the test automation tools reduces the time needed to test the UI and UX, performance, security, API, or even backend side of the software. Every time there is a build, you can deploy automated tests. They will ensure there $are no mistakes in the code. You can even automate that process by using Continuous Integration and Continuous Development tools such as Teamcity or CircleCi. Manual testing would take longer, and the result could be not as thorough. A simple human error, an oversight, a forgotten test, or only tiredness can all be sources of mistakes. 

You should keep in mind that the Quality Assurance Engineer or the Tester needs to have enough time to write the test plan and the test cases. If time is of the essence for your project, it will be quicker to test things manually. Additionally, when the vision of the software is still dynamic, and lots of changes are introduced frequently, test automation would also take more time. You need to tailor the means to your needs.

The costs of automated test tools will offset themselves later on

Time is money, and you shouldn’t be wasting yours trying to find software bugs that shouldn’t even be there or testing the same functionality over and over again. Since a dedicated tool can run those tests, your money will be better invested in a Tester or a QA to discover more difficult test scenarios or to carry out other demanding tasks. This would highly increase the quality of your product, decrease the likelihood of your future users finding bugs, and cancel the need to engage a team in product development once again. Plus, the test documentation will be written on its own by the testing tool!

When you choose to perform automation testing, you need to take into account the costs. Some cost you the time of the Tester or QA in your team, while some can be quite pricey. It is best to discuss what are the essential requirements for the testing strategy and choose the tool that is tailored for your project.

Choose the right automated testing tools for you

Now, let us dive deeper into tools. There are multiple tools available on the market designed for a variety of purposes. Some are better at testing UI, some are better at testing API, and some are used for testing databases. Depending on what the needs for the testing strategy are, you may need to consider getting one or several tools for the Tester or QA Engineer. 

There are a few open-source or built-in automated testing tools available on the Internet. Learning resources and documentation are easy to access and to understand. You need the right person to walk you through all the possibilities offered by each of these tools. Maybe the best solution will be to use a library such as Cypress for UI testing, or perhaps a fully developed tool such as Katalon will be better suited.

Unfortunately, the resources that offer all the functionalities or even the most-needed ones are paying, or they require some knowledge for integrating them into the development flow. The knowledge needed to understand and find the right solutions often requires a highly skilled Automated QA or Tester.

Test automation tool development flow

Keeping up with the requirements

Once the tests are written, and their place in the development processes is established, they should no longer change, except if there are some changes in the scope of the functionalities or the test data. It makes the maintenance of automated tests relatively undemanding. But if you know that the project’s scope is likely to change, the changes in the test plans will be an ongoing hindrance for the QA or Tester, and s/he will have to update them every time there is a modification.

Impression of prestige

We can’t overemphasise this enough: there is some prestige attached to having automated tests. For some people, the merits of test automation may not be obvious, but for some, having automated tests indicate a well-thought-of project or excellence. More and more companies and start-ups want to be in this reputable pool by using the latest technologies. The effect of this trend is the variety of ready to be used tools and solutions that are accessible and effortless.

This trend doesn’t mean that every project needs to have automated tests. The decision to include them or not is on a project-to-project basis. Here is a list of some external tools and resources we think you could consider:

Cypress

Appium

Pytest 

Jest

Selenium

Katalon

ZAP

JMeter

Gatling

Burp Suite

Having realistic expectations for automated testing leads to a successful testing strategy. In contrast, unrealistic expectations can diminish the level of trust and motivation for the team and the project. Is there anything else you’d like to know about automated tests? Feel free to ask us: hello@start-up.house.