Software testing is an essential part of the development process. This part helps to prevent failures in a final product, to deliver it faster, and save budgets. Among various types of software testing, there is a very important one that facilitates testing activity. It's automation testing. In big projects with thousands of code lines to provide manual testing is impossible. Implementing test automation helps to cope with it. Besides testing thousands of code lines in minutes, automation testing is provided for continuous, regression, and functional testing. It shortens the time of the development process and helps testers to focus on core tasks of testing activity.
First of all, what are the benefits of automation testing? Knowledge of these benefits can facilitate the right decisions.
Expand coverage. Sometimes product owners want to add new features to an existing application. When programmers make those code changes, it can cause failures in particular parts of an app or the entire system. With automation testing, it is easy to maintain a system in a stable and workable state. Automation testing tools can scan code, check changes, and report about problems. Software testers decide which failures programmers should eliminate, according to reports. Also, in big projects that are permanently growing, automation testing is the only correct solution. Checking code manually in this situation can last forever.
Higher safety. The testing process is much cheaper than fixing failures, especially when a product already launches. Hence, early automation testing allows a development team to shrink the feedback cycle, identify and prevent errors that reduce project costs. Comprehensive testing helps to exclude failure associated with the human factor. In complex test scenarios, with various data to test, it is more rational to provide automation testing. Automation testing provides higher safety and helps the development team feel more confident about system stability.
Faster validation. Testing is always a repetitive process. Some test cases testers should repeat permanently, and it takes a lot of time. But automation testing shortens this process from weeks to hours. According to Infoworld research, 88 % of companies that automate 50% of test cases experience a faster testing cycle. Moreover, automation testing allows a team to reuse test cases. Writing test cases requires a lot of time and deep experience, but for automation, testers can write test cases once and reuse it unlimited quantity times.
