Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
11.6.9. 3
Cost
Model features that help in reducing costs include flexible staffing based on resource
load variations; higher cost reduction due to low on-site ratio and major team staff
based at low-cost location; and high automation gains.
11.6 .10
Automation Benefits
Some of the testing processes that can be successfully automated include test man-
agement, test case execution, test analysis, and reporting. Even here test case execu-
tion cannot be automated completely. So most testing activities are predominantly
manual and are not readily amenable to automation. However, automation offers
advantages over manual efforts. It reduces or eliminates human error, reduces
monotonous work from human beings, helps in bringing in reusable components
that increase productivity, and reduces execution time substantially.
The kind of application being tested, the automation tool used, the kind of
testing required, and the kind of test cases to be automated dictate how much
automation can and should be done. Automation for test case execution requires
extra work in the form of creating scripts. So automation is useful only when the
test case being automated should be run repeatedly. It will be waste if a test case
that is required to run only once or twice is being automated. Regression test cases
are supposed to run many times over different releases of the software. So these test
cases are the best candidates for automation. Similarly, in the production instance,
sanity test cases are run repeatedly. So these are also good candidates for automa-
tion (see Figure 11.7).
The team was able to automate almost 99% of regression and sanity test cases.
The chosen tool (QTP and LoadRunner) came in handy as this feature-rich tool
really helped in automating test cases efficiently without much manual coding in
scripts. Overall the team was able to automate almost 66% of all test cases (func-
tional, performance, compatibility, and integration) across all 23 applications and
all versions of these applications.
Variation in percentage of automation will depend on complexity of test cases
in any project. In the engagement, the team found some test cases that were very
34%
Automation
Manual
66%
Figure 11..
Automation of test execution out of total testing effort.
