Learn About Automated Software Testing and Its Importance | EduBridge India

Automated Software Testing is the application of tools and technology to test software to reduce testing efforts and deliver highly capable, faster and more affordable software solutions. It helps to create better quality software with less effort.

Many companies already use automation testing to a certain level and heavily rely on manual testing because they don’t know how to properly reap the benefits of automated testing in their development processes.

With the increasing competition today, businesses need faster releases and quality software to meet the demand for their services and products. They have started adopting agile and DevOps practices, leveraging automated testing software to achieve faster releases, better quality products and a quicker return on investment.

Initiating automated tests in an organization requires significant time and effort. However, there is not much financial commitment when starting on a small scale. Many open-source test automation tools can be used, especially in the early stages.

Often, companies whose core product(s) are not software are afraid to invest in automation testing, fearing that the returns will not be as expected or will there be a positive return on investment.

So let’s take a look at why automation testing is essential for your organization and the benefits it can bring.

Why is Automated Software Testing important?

As mentioned above, automated software testing uses open source and paid test automation tools to quickly and more efficiently test applications 24/7 without any human intervention. It adopts different testing approaches and replaces the various tasks of manual testers, effectively improving the overall test coverage.

In this type of software testing, pre-written scripts get tested to ensure quality software is released. Therefore, it plays a vital role in delivering quality software faster and reduces regression testing time.

Therefore, this automated software testing method is vital as it helps QA teams recheck and validate results faster and more effectively with less human effort.

This process also ensures that the software application developed is flawless and performs well in all conditions. Thus, businesses that adopt the automated software testing method reap the many benefits detailed below:

Reduce Cost (Failure)

If you want to justify launching automated tests, don’t just look at the financials but see the cost of failure. What is the cost to the company if no issues get found when testing manually and escaping into production? Are you ready to lose customers? How much time, resources & money does it take to rectify the situation?

A set of test suites gets executed repeatedly every time a change is done in the code and reduces the risk of problems leaking into the field. Automated testing helps find bugs early in the software development lifecycle, reducing the risk of delivering defective software.

Saving on time

Although the initial setup of automated test cases takes a lot of time and effort, you can reuse them after you automate your tests. Automated tests can run significantly faster, are less error-prone, and require less effort than manual tests.

In an ever-changing codebase, you can automatically run tests on each commit. You don’t have to constantly go through manual steps by setting the environment or remembering the steps to run each test. Everything gets done automatically.

CI and DevOps Foundation

Automated testing is the foundation of any Continuous Integration or DevOps setup. Both CI and DevOps adhere philosophy of “Fail fast, fail early”. Every commit to the codebase gets automatically tested while the results get reported back to the developers. Developers prioritize fixing any test that breaks the build to ensure that the mainline code always works as expected.

Accuracy and Reliability

Manual testing is prone to errors due to the number of prerequisites involved in running each test. Additionally, each test may require a different order of execution.

Manual testers are humans, so errors are to be expected. It can cause false results and can get spread to the development team.

Automated tests perform the same steps with precision every time. Results are usually made available to all concerned as soon as possible.

Another aspect of reliability is re-running the same tests on different servers. It gives you the ability to quickly verify if the tests are working as expected on all servers, thus eliminating the possibility of server configuration issues.

Load test

Load testing makes sure that your software can handle expected & unexpected user loads. If you currently use a manual testing approach in your organization, load testing will likely get delayed until the end of a development cycle. Agile methodologies and Continuous Integration expose the situation early & load testing of a large percentage of organizations continues to do it too late, ultimately pushing release dates further and delaying software deployment.

Automated testing can run thousands of tests simultaneously, simulating millions of users, which is nearly impossible with manual testing.

Realistic load tests should include parameterized settings that can configure using randomly chosen variables that represent what happens in the real world.

Increased Confidence

Agile methodologies recommend short feature development cycles called Sprints, which usually last 2-3 weeks. These short sprints iterate over a larger release lifecycle. It requires a new way of organizing testing efforts and demands greater efficiency. Each sprint focuses on developing a small set but must eventually deliver a functional system, including all features from previous sprints. Manually testing all features repeatedly in each sprint is inefficient, expensive and inefficient.

It is where test automation has a great benefit. Automating tests and quickly repeating each sprint gives you confidence that everything is working as expected.

Measure Quality Metrics

Extensions and tools available for automated testing include code coverage (i.e. the percentage of code tested), technical debt, semantic check, etc. Typically, these metrics occur when tests run as part of a Continuous Integration setup or DevOps workflow.

They can measure such metrics as the tests themselves reside with the rest of the code. It provides opportunities to measure the quality of codebases in minutes by parsing the source code during an automated build phase. It is not possible at all in manual testing.

Conclusion

Organizations and businesses continue to demand faster releases and quality products. Software testing plays a vital role in ensuring quality products. It’s critical to test applications early to identify bugs and ensure delivery timelines get met. Although manual testing has been in demand since its inception, with complex applications and connected devices available, automated software testing is an effective way to improve testing efficiency and coverage.

Organizations adopt automated software testing solutions to take advantage of the benefits they offer, such as increasing the speed of delivery with faster releases, freeing manual testers from repetitive tasks, reducing regression testing time, and being available 24/7 to ensure quality.

If the quality of your product is your number one priority, I highly recommend using automated testing as part of your daily development practices. It ensures your app gets tested in a better way that gives confidence to developers, management, and the customer alike.

So take advantage of a next-generation testing service provider to get all these benefits of automation testing. Choosing the services of independent software testing service providers will assist in effective automated software testing and ensure faster releases and quality.