Download ppt - © Company Confidential Business Case for Test Automation S.Janardhanan Chief Technology Officer ITC Infotech India Limited Business

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Business Case for Test

Automation

S.JanardhananChief Technology Officer

ITC Infotech India Limited

Business Case for Test

Automation


Agenda

• Test Automation – Myths and Reality

• Return on Investments • Key take outs and summary


Test Automation – Myths and Reality


Test Automation Myths

• Test Automation is simple, every tester can do it

– This myth is promoted by the tool sales people. They are trying to promote the following test automation process:

• Record the script• Enhance the script by adding functions and data

driving• Run the scripts• Report results

– Under the influence of this myth a QA manager can proudly report: All our testers are developing test automation.


Reality - Test automation is a software development task

• Automation should be designed, developed and tested

• You need to have some kind of a programming background to implement test automation. Test Automation is not as complex as C++/C#/Java development.

• Test automation standards should be developed

• Automated test components are assets that should be treated like application source code, unit tested, integration tested and performance aspects considered.


Myth #2 – Commercial test tools are expensive

• Under the influence of this myth some companies, especially the small ones:

– Try to develop their own test automation tools– Use scripting languages like Perl and Ruby– Use shareware test tools– Do not consider test automation at all


Reality – Commercial tools are cheap

• Per seat license for most expensive automation tool is $8K

• This tool will be used for 5 years.

• Maintenance/Support fees are 20% of tool cost or $1,800 per year

• The cost of this tool is $8K/5+$1,800 = $3,100 per year

• The automation developer cost with overhead is $100K per year

• The cost of this tool is just 3% of the person who uses it, but productivity gain can be very significant


Commercial Tool Benefits:

• Customer support. Many of the open source tools come and go with little to no support

• Most commercial tools are constantly being updated as technologies change

• Most commercial tools usually have more functionality (QTP can test various GUI applications: Web, .Net, Java, VB, C/C++, PowerBuilder, etc. vs. WATIR – Web only)

• Commercial tools usually have a large community of users, which translates into better availability of qualified resources

• Commercial tools require less advanced programming

• More test automation frameworks are available for commercial tools

• Commercial tools are integrated with Test Management tools which make reporting and execution much simpler.


Return On Investment (ROI)


Classic ROI Calculation

ROI = BENEFIT/COST

Automation Cost = Price Of HW + Price of SW + Development Cost + Maintenance Cost + Execution Cost

Manual Testing Cost = Development Cost + Maintenance Cost + Execution Cost

ROI = (Manual Testing Cost - Automation Cost)/Automation Cost

Looks right, doesn’t it?


Problems with Classic ROI Calculation

• You can’t compare Automated Testing and Manual Testing. They are not the same and they provide different information about the AUT.

• You can’t compare cost of multiple execution of automated tests vs. manual tests. You would never dream of executing that many test cases manually.


Automation Real ROI

• ROI value IS NOT the value of Automation vs. Cost of executing these tests manually

• Automation ROI value IS the benefit of this type of testing, and it can be:

• Reducing Time to Market / Execution Time• Increased Test Efficiency (Productivity)• Increased Test Effectiveness & test coverage• Decrease in test defects escaping to production • Improved test repeatability


Reduced Time to Market

• Can get a greater market share

• Makes people available to work on other projects

• Higher margins, if no competitive products are currently available


Productivity and Effectiveness

• More testing gets done faster, increasing the odds of finding defects

• Defects found early have better chances to be fixed• Manual Testers can concentrate on clever ways to finding

defects, instead of typing test inputs and verify output. • About 7% of bug fixes create new bugs, sometimes in

already tested parts of the system. With automation you can rerun tests for those modules. This almost never happened when testing done manually.


Manual VS Automated Testing Example

Test Cycle Manual Execution Time (days) Automation Execution Time (days)

1 7 30.5

3 21 31.5

5 35 32.5

7 49 33.5

9 63 34.5

• There is a suite of manual test cases that have been deemed as candidates for automation. When run manually, the execution can start immediately (ITC = 0 days). It takes the manual testing team seven business days to execute all of the test cases (TEC = 7 days). The Total Testing Time will always be a linear factor of seven days.

• If the test cases are to be automated it will take 30 business days to complete (ITC = 30 days). Once the test scripts have been written it takes half of a business day to complete the tests with the necessary hardware resources (TEC = 0.5 days).


ROI summary

• Each project requires different types of automation - there is no easy formula available to calculate ROI

• Performing ROI calculation can help to determine upfront what type of automation, what level of skills, what tools will be required.


Thank You