How to Ensure Success in Automated Software Testing?

Have repetitive manual tasks escalated your budget and deadlines? Automated testing is solution. It is about executing repetitive test cases using software tools.
It requires combination of manual and automated testing to clear the bugs. As a report by NIST suggested, poor software quality hurts US economy by billions of dollars every year. A big chunk of these bug dollars can be regained by improving infrastructure for quality assurance.

As the complexity and scale of software has increased, test automation has become an effective solution in software quality assurance.
Test automation makes sense in a scenario when there are several repetitive tests, frequent regression testing iterations, a large set of BVT cases and manual test execution cannot be relied on for critical functionality.

Success of automation testing depends to a large extent on the selection of testing tools/frameworks. It is for the team of testers to take into account various factors before choosing relevant automation tools. This one time exercise is an important one as it will influence the project big way in long run.

Criteria that needs to be considered before selecting any testing tool includes skilled resource to allocate for automation tasks, budget, testing needs, project environment and technology. Does the automation tool support all tools and objects used in the code? A tool failing to identify the objects used in the application may get you stuck for small tests.

Tool version used for the test development/development test must be stable. The vendor company must provide with appropriate customer support along with online help resources and user manual.

Tool learning curve is another important factor. Learning time of the tool must be acceptable for the goals. The automation tool is required only for a single project needs, or you are looking for a common tool for several projects. The tool chosen must support most of the coding languages on the projects.

Choose a quality automation tool that supports maximum testing types (Unit, functional, regression etc.) is always a better decision. Tool must also be robust enough to automate complex requirements.

The tool must also facilitate adequate reporting with graphical interface. Clear and concise reports help to conclude the test results quickly and efficacy.