Why You Need an Ardent Team for Automated Testing Services?

A question that is a big challenge for a majority of the projects who work in an agile environment: Why Should You Hire a Dedicated Team for Automated Testing Services? With time boxed approaches and deadlines that have to be met without compromising on the quality, it is very important to manage the time properly using Automation Testing.

Let’s find out the answer to this question by analyzing the various aspects of the project and balancing them to make a decision.

We often hear that it is the best practice to have a dedicated automation team. The following factors can help us decide accurately:

Deadlines are one of the important factors here, if the deadlines are tight and you have to test a new feature, then it can be really tricky to test that manually and automating the test cases at the same time.

There also stands a high probability that one of the areas between manual and automation testing would be compromised. We can understand this better by comparing the two different approaches, one follows agile and the other follows the V model. To perform both these testing techniques in an agile environment, it would be way more challenging that doing it in the V model process due to the time boxed approach.

We all know that both manual and automation testing require some specific skill sets. While the automation testers are expected to have scripts as well as coding knowledge, the manual testers are expected to have out of the box thinking and be better at understanding the requirements to convert them to effective test cases.

If your team has this balance, then you can divide them in to manual and automation test teams where the manual testers will write the concrete test cases which will be automated by the automation testing and together they will be able to achieve quality in the given timeframe.

The Project budget shall decide if you can afford a dedicated automation team. Sometimes, you don’t have enough budget to add more resources in the project and have the work divided efficiently among the available resources to do both manual as well as automation testing. Though the budget may be less, it does not mean that one should compromise with the quality of the application under test. Usually, with a tight budget, the testing team relies in the test automation to achieve the maximum possible percentage of the automation effort versus the overall testing effort.

Since we cannot achieve hundred percentage of automation, the manual testing effort will exist always in any software application. Also, consider the use of the open source testing tool which have no or very less license costs as long as the testing purpose is achieved.

If you have a huge application with a complex structure and numerous screens, then the amount of automation required will be more than a normal web or a mobile application. Yet again, it would be a good idea to provide automation to a separate team, so that it can be done effectively and within the given deadline. Automation testing services play a vital role when it comes to regression testing and maintenance in addition to saving a lot of time and efforts too.

Therefore, the automated software testing services are regarded as a one-time investment that proves to be an asset in the long run, provided that the test scripts are maintained regularly by the team.

There are numerous automation tools that do not require much of coding knowledge and are pretty easy to use. Sometimes, while testing simple applications, the automation framework is pretty simple to design and can be done by the same team. Contingent to the type of tools you are using for automation testing, you can choose your team to do it or get it done by an ardent team.

(Also read about - Mobile apps automation testing tools)

We saw that the above factors could help us decide if automation should be done by an ardent team. Let’s discuss some advantages and disadvantages of having a special automation team.

Reliable: Automation is nothing, but the program. If written as per expectation, there are no chances that the automation program will do anything which is not written. If any program works for you, it will work with the same efficiency for a longer time.

Reusability: The automated test cases can be reused on different versions of an application and also on the same version of an application on a different browser.

Repeatable: Execution of the same set of automation test cases is possible.

Correct Estimations: After some iterations of Automation, you would be aware of the exact time required for the execution. So, you can estimate more accurately.

Cost Factor: Automation can replace the repeated tasks of manual testing which ultimately will reduce the costing of the project.

Not a replacement of Actual Testing: Automation testing is not the replacement of Actual testing; manual testing can be more innovative and interactive while testing. It is wrong to expect innovation from automation while execution.

Wrong expectations: Teams expect a lot from the automation tool. It needs to be understood that it’s just a program which will do what it is asked to do.

Wrong Costing: In the initial days of framework development and manual test case conversions to automation test cases takes time. This is the first time that the testing team implements automation, which can lead to inaccurate estimation.

Results False Sense of Quality: Automation is a program developed by humans. Since it does not have its own brain to sense the defects, it can give false results at times.

Having a dedicated automation team has its own advantages and disadvantages. The best probable solution would be involving them to the daily scrum meetings, so that they have an idea about the application under test and what to expect from it in terms of the application functionality.

This way, we can have the best of both worlds: Automation as well as Manual. The manual testing team will find quality scenarios and would give them to the automation team to analyze the quality of the scenarios before automating them and adding their own tests to make them more useful.