Automation testing-Advantages and disadvantages

This article gives a brief Introduction on advantages of automated Testing and disadvantages of automated testing. Also explain different methods available for Automated Testing, their benefits and guidelines of automated testers should follow to get the ultimate benefits of automation.

Advantages of automation testing

Automated testing is a process of automating manual testing process with testing tools or using any scripting language. To automate the testing, we have a solid understanding on existing functional process and it should be well documented. The main purpose of automated testing is to reduce cost , speedup the testing process ,better performance and reduce or no human interaction.

Processes of Automation

A well defined test cases, which is developed by experience person on the basis of organization’s business functional specifications and design document.Test case should specify predictable results of the test.

A QA environment, which is a replica of production environment including database setup and all required setup for testing . The environment should support all future builds of application .

Following test methods can be automated

Functional – testing the functionality of the business operations perform as expected
Regression – testing of a stable application
Exception or Negative – Error conditions in the system
Stress – determining the absolute capacities of the application and operational infrastructure
Performance – Determines the performance of the system is adequate for both batch runs and online transactions as per business projections and requirements
Load – determines the point in which capacity and performance of the system may degrade. It measures the situation that hardware or software up gradation requirement

Areas of application must be automated first for better benefits of automation.

Stable areas of an application
Highly redundant tasks or scenarios
Repetitive tasks which is very boring to test again again by manual tester
Time-consuming tasks and scenarios for faster completion
Well documented test cases

How to achieve success in automation

Following steps are very important to achieve success in automation

Automation script should be as simple as possible
Test reports must its own results; human interpretation should not involve.
Test can be repeated as many times as needed without human interaction
Test result should be stable and very meaningful .Test result should not effect by changes of external environment
Tests verify all the functional requirements of the application
Clear-Easy to understand each statement.
Tests gives affordable performance and executed fast
Test result should be reliable and acceptable
Recovery scenario of the test should be well defined. Any failure should point out the specific reason of the failure of the test
Test should be defined in a very simple manner , easily understood
Test should be Flexible to modify and value addition.

Disadvantages of Automation Testing

Skilled and Proficient resource is required to write the automate
and debug test scripts
Maintenance of the test scripts may be very costly, if automation scripts are not developed considering future modifications of the application. In this case minor change of the application may cost more for scripts maintenance.
Automation is beneficial only for repeatability and reusable of test cases
If application is not stable and mature ,then automation may be very costly.