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Top 5 Advantages of Test Automation |
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Reduced time to market – Ability to execute more testcases by adding the machine execution power in a shorter time period, resulting in reduced time to market. |
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Increased test coverage – Ability to test multiple functional conditions by varying the test data with minimal effort |
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Improved Quality and Customer Satisfaction – More predictable QA cycle and increased test coverage helps identify most defects, resulting in improved quality and customer satisfaction. |
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Organizational Growth and Efficiency – Automation performs the mundane, repetitive testing effort thereby releasing resources to focus on more complex and challenging test situations. |
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Leverage Technology for Testing – Testing tools facilitate complex testing capabilities like parallel testing, event-driven testing, and load testing, all generally difficult to coordinate with manual testing methods. |
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Budgetary Constraints – Reduce and control operating costs, making capital funds available for other core activities. |
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Effective Resource Allocation – Free internal resources for critical and core QA activities to business and leverage the technical expertise. |
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Improve Business Focus – Internally focus on tasks that can generate better ROI and improved customer satisfaction. |
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Time to Market Pressure – Leverage the advantage of time zone differences from that of the outsourced service provider for round-the-clock work. |
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Third Party Validation and Verification – Testing by third party gives the truest view of the actual state of a given application. |
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Define Objectives, Identify Suitable Tasks, and Be Specific – Understand the corporate objectives for outsourcing, identify tasks that meet the objectives of outsourcing, and be specific when defining SOW and SLA with the outsourcing vendor. |
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Start Small, Set Realistic Expectations, and Communicate Often – It helps to start with smaller, more controllable projects for outsourced QA and tune the process to make it work to meet business objectives. Frequent communication to the key people involved in the outsourcing process helps to avoid future problems.. |
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Measure Before, During, and After – Define intermediate manageable milestones for better visibility and capacity for measuring performance of the outsourced service provider. |
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Prepare Organization for Change – To realize the gains of outsourcing, one has to be ready for adopting related changes in process, technology, tools, and management. –Think Moore’s law. |
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Commit to a Relationship with Outsourcing Vendor – Prepare for a journey and not for a project in order to truly gain the benefits of Outsourcing. Don’t expect quick results . |
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Risks and related contingencies are not included in the QA Plan. |
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Role, responsibilities, and respective accountability of team members associated with QA activities are not included in the QA plan. |
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The QA plan is written during the beginning of the project and is never reviewed/updated to reflect the changes in project scope and timelines as work proceeds. |
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The QA plan does not include the overall strategy for testing; how does it address the quality objectives of the application and/or organization? |
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Only defect-related Quality Metrics are included in the QA plan; effectiveness, coverage, and efficiency-related metrics are not mentioned. |
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Test objective or detail of functional point being tested.. |
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Discrete steps describing details of testcase. |
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Test data to be used during execution of testcase. |
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One or more test conditions to be tested and expected results. |
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Additional attributes associated with testcase – priority, associated module, status… |
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Reduced Time to Market – Ability to execute more testcases by adding the machine execution power in a shorter time period, resulting in reduced time to market.. |
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Nature of Breaking Toys Since Childhood – Should have instincts to be able to think of exception conditions and identify difficult-to-find defects. |
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Process Oriented and Methodical Working Style – Should have process-oriented mindset and be able to define and follow methodology for the QA lifecycle. |
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Good Awareness of Technology – A good tester should have a solid understanding of technologies involved before proceeding. |
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Strong Logical Thinking and Communication Skills – Be able to think logically about user expectations and relate them to application functionality. Strong communication skills are required for keeping everyone involved in the product lifecycle on the same page. |
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Disclaimer: The above Top-5 points are based on the experience of InfoStretch consultants. The Top 5 points indicated above for each topic should not be considered the result of any authorized research or specific guidelines from InfoStretch Corporation. Readers of the above information are advised to apply the details to their work solely at their own discretion and InfoStretch is not responsible for the outcome. |
