Automation is Fun

Automation testing has gained widespread popularity, however beginners still feel it’s a complex web where they will get stuck and regret the decision. Don’t be afraid of starting with automation testing. I know, the first thing that will come to you mind is – learn a programming language, select test cases to automate, learn eclipse, and the list will go on…Stop right there! Look at the bright side – no more manual execution of test cases, more testing in less time, and more time to think about how to make the product more useful. Plus you can add this cool skill set in your resume. Here are some reasons that show automation is easy and useful.

• Free tools available to experiment
  It doesn’t cost anything to experiment with automation. With robust industry standard open source frameworks like Selenium – you can start experimenting with automation at zero investment.
• Scripting is interesting
  Manual testing sometimes becomes monotonous for testers. They lose interest, which in turn affects their work output. Especially, when they are testing one area of the product repeatedly, after a point they become ‘blind’ to the bugs in the code. Introduction to automation will be fun and challenging for them. They’ll learn new things and will be happy to do both – manual and automation testing.

• Speedup Testing
  You can create and execute test cases faster with automation. Initial creation will take more time, but gradually it will decrease with practice. By using page object model in your automation framework, you can reuse most of your code, therefore reducing the overall creation time of scripts. After the scripts are ready, you can run them in the day as well as at night to speed up the testing process. Therefore, you can quickly validate software changes involved with each new release of your product and the test cycle times too will decrease significantly.
• Save Cost
  Once a product attains the stable manual testing phase, it is good to switch to automated testing as it saves cost involved in manual testing.Number of resources required for regression testing is reduced. Computers can execute instructions much faster and with fewer errors. And while machines run the scripts, QA personnel can spend time on other important tasks like product feature analysis.
• Increase Test Coverage
  Once scripts are created, you can run them in different configurations.You can repeat test scripts with multiple sets of test data. Load and stress testing can also be performed using different automation tools like LoadRunner and OpenSTA. to check the product’s behavior when used by large number of users.Therefore, overall quality of your product increases with more test coverage.
• Think Strategic
  Since the overall load on the testers time is reduced, the QA team can think about broader issues – usability for example – making them more valuable and strategic to the software development effort.

Yes, it’s true that everything cannot be automated, but still automation can help you to great extent in you regression testing work. Automation code/framework used in one of the projects can also be kept for future projects references. If you are facing difficulty in writing your automation scripts, don’t give up, there a number of online resources, groups and frameworks that can help you get started!.