The Benefits of Automation Testing

Every software development group tests its products, yet delivered software always has defects. Test engineers strive to catch them before the product is released but they always creep in and often reappear, even with the best manual testing processes. Test automation software is the best way to increase the effectiveness, efficiency, and coverage of your software testing.

Making the Move From Manual To Automated Testing

Why automated testing?

Manual software testing is performed by a human sitting in front of a computer carefully going through application screens, trying various usage and input combinations, comparing the results to the expected behavior, and recording their observations. Manual tests are often repeated during development cycles for source code changes and other situations like multiple operating environments and hardware configurations.

Test automation tools

An automated testing tool can playback pre-recorded and predefined actions, compare the results to the expected behavior and report the success or failure of these manual tests to a test engineer. Once automated tests are created they can easily be repeated and extended to perform tasks impossible with manual testing. Because of this, savvy managers have found that automated software testing is an essential component of successful development projects.

Automated software testing has long been considered critical for big software development organizations but is often thought to be too expensive or difficult for smaller companies to implement. SmartBear’s tools are affordable enough for single developer shops and powerful enough that our customer list includes some of the largest and most respected companies in the world.

Automated testing saves time and money

Software tests have to be repeated often during development cycles to ensure quality. Every time source code is modified software tests should be repeated. For each release of the software, it should be tested on all supported operating systems and hardware configurations. Manually repeating these tests is costly and time-consuming. Once created, automated tests can be run over and over again at no additional cost and they are much faster than manual tests. Automated software testing can reduce the time to run repetitive tests from days to hours. A time savings that translates directly into cost savings.

Vastly increases your test coverage

Automated software testing can increase the depth and scope of tests to help improve software quality. Lengthy tests that are often avoided during manual testing can be run unattended. They can even be run on multiple computers with different configurations. Automated software testing can look inside an application and see memory contents, data tables, file contents, and internal program states to determine if the product is behaving as expected. Test automation can easily execute thousands of different complex test cases during every test run providing coverage that is impossible with manual tests.

Testing improves accuracy

Even the most conscientious tester will make mistakes during monotonous manual testing. Automated tests perform the same steps precisely every time they are executed and never forget to record detailed results. Testers freed from repetitive manual tests have more time to create new automated software tests and deal with complex features.

Automation does what manual testing cannot

Even the largest software and QA departments cannot perform a controlled web application test with thousands of users. Automated testing can simulate tens, hundreds, or thousands of virtual users interacting with a network, software, and web applications.

Automated testing helps developers and testers

Shared automated tests can be used by developers to catch problems quickly before sending to QA. Tests can run automatically whenever source code changes are checked in and notify the team or the developer if they fail. Features like these save developers time and increase their confidence.

QA and dev team morale improves

This is hard to measure but we’ve experienced it firsthand. Executing repetitive tasks with automated software testing gives your team time to spend on more challenging and rewarding projects. Team members improve their skill sets and confidence and, in turn, pass those gains on to their organization.

There are several different types of software tests that can be automated

Why SmartBear for automated testing?

Ease of test creation

SmartBear provides automation tools and frameworks for developers and testers to help validate and verify UIs, APIs, and databases.

Automate in your CI/CD

Each of our test automation tools comes with out-of-the-box plugins with popular CI servers like Jenkins and a CLI for others.

Cost savings

See instant ROI and savings with easy-to-use tools that you can trial and implement before buying.

Better test coverage

Run tests at scale with real-world data on virtualized infrastructure, real browsers, or with generated load.

Broad language support

Don't spend time learning proprietary languages - our tools work out of the box with your favorite languages like Python, JavaScript, and more.

Faster debugging

Run automated tests in a continuous pipeline giving your team faster feedback, reducing debugging time and time to resolution.

While automated testing has been considered essential for organizations, both large and small, to implement and deliver outstanding software and stay competitive in the industry, it can be tough to get started. Outlining an effective roadmap, building robust frameworks, choosing the right tools, and measuring the potential monetary impact that automation could have on your delivery lifecycle are all critical components of any successful automated testing strategy, but each step presents its own challenges and costs.

Check out some of the resources below for more tips, resources, and tools for you to use to make your transformation seamless. You’ll find more information on what you should automate first, how to succeed when moving beyond manual testing, a downloadable guide to help you pick the right tool that fits your needs, and an ROI calculator you can leverage to help your boss, or your team, understand why automated testing is imperative.