Sunday 11 May 2014

Measuring The Success Of Test Automation - An Insight

Evaluating the success of test automation has always been a challenge and an important issue too. Objectives of test automation are always vital, as they ultimately determine the direction a team of developers is headed in. It also determines the end result of all the funding as well as the assessment of any particular project and last but not the least, the probability of success or failure in meeting the intended mission objectives. One of the mainstays of measurement of success is the AROI or Automation Return on Investment, which is at times misconstrued as the benefits or advantages of automation. Let us discuss how to evaluate the success of test automation.

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Previously, a crude process of evaluation was followed. It included measurement of the percentage of test cases that were automated. However, this at times turned out to have a fair bit of loopholes, and was soon discarded and a new method was adopted.

Before we get into that, let us at first know why we need to do test automation? The main objective of test automation measurement is to improve the test efficiency so as to save time along with effort, along with a substantial amount of costs at the end of the day.

Now what are the most appropriate ways of measuring the success of automatic evaluation of software? Rather than measuring the percentage of evaluation cases to be automated, the essential metrics of automatic evaluation should put more emphasis on the savings that can be acquired from successful execution of those automatic evaluation cases in terms of time as well as efforts.

The entire process is though easier said than done. Actually, correctly calculating the time along with effort saved through execution of automatic evaluation is an extremely complicated process. For accurate calculation, it is imperative to know the amount of time as well as the efforts it takes for execution of each and every manual test case. Besides, once those figures are available, it becomes necessary to map the data to the actual scripts of the automatic evaluations that are being executed, followed by a holistic calculation of all the parameters of the evaluations.

In order to reach a concrete conclusion through this entire process, what is needed is a sizable amount of time, effort as well as a seamless collaboration with the team that executes manual tests.

However, one might not forget that there is always the presence of a certain amount of tests that are not yielding the desired results in spite of being automated. Hence, in order to bring this percentage into consideration it is imperative to change things into Value Metrics of Test Automation.

This new process of evaluation has been pretty effective, albeit the strenuous effort that is needed to collate all the required information. However, the test management tool used needs to be appropriate and should be such that it will readily support capturing the relevant information, aggregating the same and returning the desired metrics alongside the trend. For this, MS Excel is a wonderful tool that comes in handy.

However, just as a footnote perhaps it will not be inappropriate to mention here that in order to get maximum ROI for automatic evaluation, the following parameters need to be maintained:

The scope of the Automation will have to be determined in details before getting off with the project.

The appropriate automation tool needs to be selected on the basis of the fact whether it is appropriate for the assessment. Do not select tools on the basis of its popularity.

The framework needs to be appropriate. The standards for scripting will have to be maintained in a proper way. The scripts, comments as well as the code indentation to need to be uniform, and finally, exceptions should be handled adequately.

Selection of the right automatic evaluation tool, assessment process as well as a testing team is extremely important factors when it comes to a successful evaluation. Moreover, when it comes to successfully evaluate the achievement of these tests, maintenance of these parameters properly also makes the evaluation easier as well as quicker.

You can hire testers from top certified automation testing company in India who can help you accomplish testing within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide outsource automated testing services. If you would like to hire automation testers from us or would just like to speak to one of our expert software testers, please reach out to us at Mindfire Solutions.

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