Test Automation

The true meaning of growing is to get transformed into something better and beautiful. Each period of history tells us how things have evolved over time. Today the need of the hour is automation. We need to save human efforts where ever we can so that gets utilized in something else.

There is a misconception that manual testing will be replaced by automation testing which is not true. Read below to find out what are the test cases we shouldn’t automate and test manually.

Testcases those should be done manually

• Whenever we implement new functionalities, manual testing is required as that is onetime implementation.
• Look and feel can be sensed by humans only so these type of testing needs to be tested manually.
• Usability testing, means how easy it is to use the feature should be tested by a person putting himself/herself in the shoes of a real end user.
• If the application behavior is not consistent due to continuously changing requirement, application is still being developed, then it’s a wastage of time to automate.
• Test cases which are dependent on multiple platforms for example lets say we are entering some value on a Webpage and upon save, it runs batch job that moves the update to different applications, databases, and you need to check those platforms simultaneously to confirm if it works fine. End to end automation can be done however these type of test cases are not good candidates for automation.

Testcases those should be automated

• The thumb rule is anything that is repeated needs to be automated. Regression tests are the repeated tests so that demands automation.
• Now a days with CI/CD pipeline we need to automate the Smoke test suite also. So that it gets executed post every build and then accept or reject the build automatically and manual intervention is not required.
• We need to automate scenarios where data calculation is involved and ensuring accuracy is the primary goal. If we do this manually then there are possibilities of human errors and its tiresome too.
• Data driven testing needs to be automated too. If we have a defined test flow which needs to be executed for multiple data sets then it’s a suitable candidate for automation.
• Some teams do in sprint automation, doing automation for the current sprint should always be avoided. As the application is not stable when we try to automate. Automation should be done on n-1 sprint.
• The best approach for automation in agile methodology is identify test cases from previous sprint to automate and then keep including them in the regression suite. Finally the regression suite will be executed before release.
• Performance testing should be automated as we can’t manually create the load.
• Compatibility testing should be automated. It is certainly not the best use of resources to test the same thing in different platforms, browsers, environments manually.

How to take the decision

Return on investment is the gate pass for anything and everything in the business world. If you are planning to give a proposal to your management or client then you must exercise the ROI calculation.

#	ITEM	VALUE
A	Total test cases Count	100
B	Manual efforts (per test case) Hrs	0.5
C	No of builds in a year (ex Bi-weekly)	24
D	Total Manual Efforts  (A*B*C)	1200
E	If 30$ per hour   (D*E)	36000
F	Total Manual Cost	$36,000
G	Test Design (per test case) Hrs	4
H	Dry run (per test case) Hrs	0.5
I	Debugging (per test case) Hrs	0.5
J	CI/CD Integration (per test case) Hrs	0.1
K	Total Automation Efforts        A*(G+H+I+J)	510
L	Add Buffer hours (10%)      K + K*0.1	561
M	If 30$ per hour                        L* 30	16830
N	Tool licencing cost (if any)	0
O	Total Automation Cost       M +N	$16,830
P	Investment         O	$16,830
Q	Gain                    F – O	$19,170
R	ROI                Q/P	13.9037433

For the above example ROI comes close to 14% which is excellent. Please note, the investment in automation is always high, so short term projects are not good automation candidates. The projects spanning more years produce really good returns being automated.

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