We have all heard the pitch that mobile test automation can help you save time, money, and other resources. Automation can indeed help you execute tests faster than doing it manually. It also does this with better accuracy, reliability and at a lower cost.
There are several ways in which test automation helps a business reduce costs and time spent running tests. It is vital to understand these ways before you start implementing them in your strategy. This article focuses on the several ways that automating these processes can help your team save resources.
Let’s look into some of these and how they help businesses.
1. Reducing the Testing Time
Software development is a lengthy process that can consume a lot of time. Developers have to deal with time limitations that they must adhere to when releasing applications and other software. Test automation helps save resources by reducing the time taken to test the software before delivery.
Manual testing takes more time and consumes much more resources than automated testing. With automation, software developers reduce the testing time without compromising quality. Your team concentrates more on improving the software for good user experiences rather than looking for problems.
2. Reducing Business Expenses
The software development process reduces when you automate steps such as testing. It means that the team you employ to develop software has less work to do. Automation gets the repetitive and time-consuming daily tasks out of the way for your team.
That makes it possible for you to utilize the available human resources in doing business tasks. The team focuses on more rewarding activities like engaging potential customers. They also focus more on challenging assignments that you cannot automate. That boosts your development team’s morale and saves resources.
3. Higher Test Coverage
Increasing test coverage is very vital for any software development company. Manual testing is slow and makes it difficult for companies to release software quickly. Automated testing enhances coverage by increasing the number of tests you can execute simultaneously.
As test automation continues, yours will be writing new tests and feeding them into the suite. That helps you dedicate more time to enhance the quality of your product. Manual testing can be tiresome, and people tend to avoid lengthy tests leading to resource wastage.
4. Efficiently Perform Cost-Effective Cross-Platform Tests
The applications and software that companies develop should work on different devices. They also need to be compatible with other operating systems and versions. That means you have to test the software in all these environments and see how it works before releasing it.
Doing this without automation can be a challenge as it is tiresome and time-consuming. Automated testing can help you test software on all these environments in a short time. You also do not have to purchase different devices for testing. That saves you some valuable time and resources that you could have used for other things.
5. Reusability of Test Suite
Many people fear automating testing because creating a suite appears to be daunting at first. But the best thing about it is that you are good to go once you have defined your suite. You will reuse the same test suite for future tests without having to start from scratch.
Thus, however much this can appear overwhelming at first, it is worthwhile. The reusability of test suites makes it easy for you to save time and resources that could have otherwise gone into manual testing. In the end, you release high-quality software while reducing time and resources.
6. Schedule Test Execution Any Time of the Day
As mentioned earlier, saving time is one of the benefits that test automation brings. Test automation makes it possible to schedule tests for execution at the desired time. It also makes it possible to analyze results from tests and use them to make critical business decisions.
Scheduling tests means that you do not have to be available for them to get executed. You also do not need to have resources and hardware for the process to run. You can perform tests during out-of-office times means that you utilize your resources fully and save time.
7. Faster Feedback Cycle
Feedback helps businesses to grow in different aspects. You always need feedback to decide if the features that you have developed are working properly. Manually testing and release of feedback is slow therefore making the entire process slow and, in the end, makes you use more resources.
The best thing about test automation is that you not only automate processes but also receive feedback faster than with manual testing. That helps you save time and other resources that you’d have invested in collecting feedback manually. Therefore, you need to consider using test automation in your team.
8. Better Insights
Insights, like feedback, help companies to make crucial decisions. Business insights can be helpful for you if you intend to use insights for future decision-making. Manual testing provides insights that you may not find very useful. Besides, these insights may get delayed, and you may require a lot of resources.
If you are experiencing problems with your software, insights can help you correct them. Test automation insights are more in-depth and will be helpful for business growth. You receive all the details about data tables, file contents, and memory contents. This helps you make better resource utilization decisions.
9. Eliminate Human Error
Human error is one of the problems that software companies are facing. Manual testing makes your company vulnerable to human error as the tasks involved are repetitive. People handling the testing procedures can get bored or feel tired and not finish the test execution properly.
Test automation helps you avoid human error problems. You avoid mistakes that may result from having a human handle the processes. That saves you the time you’d have spent redoing these tests. You also save on resources you’d have used to start testing from scratch after a human error.
10. Quickly Determine the Stability of Your Build
The stability of your build is one of the things that you need to check regularly. As a software development company, defining your stability is one of the best things you can do. Smoke testing is a popular technique that businesses use to determine their stability, but then it is slow and unreliable.
The best thing to do is automate smoke testing with test automation. That makes it easy to conduct smoke tests within a short time while using fewer resources. You also get to define the stability of your brand without any problems. This helps you channel your resources to other profitable business aspects.
Conclusion
Businesses around the world are looking for ways to save time, money, and other resources. Software developers, too, want to reduce the process of developing, testing, and delivering software. The best way to manage this is by automating the execution of these tests.
That helps the processes to run efficiently and to reduce business expenses while increasing accuracy. It also helps increase the coverage as you can run many tests at a go. In the end, your team gets to increase success and have a better return on investment (ROI).