In today’s digital age, businesses rely on computers and software. Cloud computing and connectivity allows businesses both large and small to compete side by side on the global market. There is however increasing pressure on businesses to deliver high quality products with fewer resources, in reduced time.
When manually testing software, developers and testers are required to go through a multitude of individual scenarios, testing a variety of usage and input combinations. This is done to assess all aspects of an application to check for bugs and coding errors against desired results and usability.
These manual tests are often repeated multiple times during the development process to incorporate code changes and different operating environments. Manual testing is labour intensive and can still result in products that have errors.
Automated software testing is a more effective and efficient way to test software.
Save Resources
Every time code is altered, it needs to be tested. If you were to do this manually, it will cost money and time. If you run automated tests, the can be repeated at no additional cost.
Speed
This is a major benefit when competing against other businesses. Automated tests are also a lot faster than manual tests and can be set to run over night, or immediately after a deployment.
Reduce Error
As you may have gathered, manual testing can be a lengthy and monotonous process and like many things, is subject to human error. Automated tests can be programed to perform any number of checks, and will produce detailed reports containing any anomalies and findings.
Increase Quality
Automated software testing can perform specific and lengthy tests without error, unattended, and on multiple computers. It has the capability to execute complex tests that are impossible with manual tests.
Focus on Development
As testers are not spending time analysing potential faults, they can spend their time working on developing software. Tests can be run whenever source code changes, the development team can then be notified of any problems or failures.
Automation can reduce the time it takes from the initial development of software, to getting your product on the market. The time saved can translate directly into cost savings. These saving can also be made due to the reduction of software failures that are made by human error. You are able to deliver reliable software.
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raj
September 2, 2013 at 1:43 pm
Nice post Alex. Automation software plays an important role today in the development of any kind of business. However I am not very much agree that business should all be automatic, we cannot automate everything; some tests still have to be done manually,but of course we can give it a try upto some extent to reduce workforce involve in the business & save time. These things are true only for large businesses, for small scale businesses automated testing will cost more than the manual testing as automation software costs more than that of man manual workforce.
MSys Technologies
December 13, 2013 at 10:39 am
It’s very important information that you have in here. Especially, I would like to add one or two more points to this. First of all, the test automation products should be capable of increasing the automation coverage of a software, the extent to which the automation can be done on it. And it indirectly affects the software’s marketing time and ROI (as mentioned). Thanks for the article.
Lenin Nair,
Senior content writer for MSys
Amandeep Singh
April 15, 2014 at 1:07 pm
Good one, Alex…
Automation is really getting its place today in the industry because of the huge benefits that it brings to the table.
The most important once according to me is the cost benefit that comes in due to the reusability of test scripts during regression phases…!
Cheers!
Aman