8 Things to Define for Successful Large Scale Test Automation Implementation

Though automation testing does not look a very lucrative or a viable option first hand due to the costs involved with regards to setting up the environment or the tools themselves – in the long run, its benefits surely surpass the initial hiccups. That said, like there’s a method for every madness, to maximize your ROI using Test Automation, you need to have a very specific plan of action.

Kalyan Rao Konda, President of Cigniti Technologies – one of the largest companies that specialize in providing testing services — told Joe Colantonio in an exclusive interview that while people usually approach test automation from a technical aspect, and they actually forget the business side of it.

Kalyan also mentioned that more often than not, the “large product development companies and also in large enterprises like banks, insurance and healthcare, … (are) organized in business units by product development groups.” This results in everybody approaching automation in their own way using different set of tools, which creates an atmosphere of inconsistency.

So, what really might constitute the best way of implementing test automation so as to maximize ROI? To start with, the following need to be defined to achieve the target:

1. Define the Product Roadmap: Kalyan again says that before organizations begin automating anything, they must ensure that they have an end goal in mind. There should be absolute clarity on what do the organizations need to automate, lest there be confusion and chaos around the whole process and the efforts prove to be a big scale failure. The effort being put in towards test automation must not be treated as an afterthought, but rather it must be given due importance at the beginning of a project itself.
2. Define the Test Process: To meet the roadmap defined, a clear definition of the test process is a must. This process must be defined keeping in mind the risks, costs, and trainings involved while implementing test automation.
3. Define the Framework: Whether an organization selects a data-driven or a keyword-driven framework, or a mix of both, defining and selecting the framework will have a definite and a positive impact on your ROI as it will help you implement the roadmap you defined earlier.
4. Define the Tools to be used: While testers can choose from a wide variety of solutions, erroneous decisions regarding the test automation tools can lead to effects that may not be reversible. Hence, selecting the right tools is a business-critical requirement for ensuring successful test runs. All variables such as integration capabilities, installation requirements, overall cost, maintenance, and compatibility with the testing environment must be kept in mind while deciding upon a tool.
5. Define the scope of Script Management: The scope of script management usually hovers around the broad areas of standard processes that are well documented, logging the errors that are generated, and most importantly testing if the script written is able to withstand unexpected behaviours.
6. Define the Manual Effort still required: Automation is an end result of a lot of manual activities such as script and test case writing, setting up the machines and then selecting the tests, and once the test is run – analyze the results. These are by no means tasks that can be done in a jiffy, and need to be planned for – both in terms of costs and efforts.
7. Define the Testing Team: If an organization understands the importance of the manual effort required, it must then give due diligence while planning the work and effort estimation with regards to the team size and the skills required for the implementation of test automation.
8. Define what will be the True Measure of your success: A few good examples of this definition may include measuring benefits such as faster go-to-market time, improved ROI, or, on the other hand, that the number of bugs have increased.

Defining the above surely requires a lot of forethought being given to their execution, test automation implementation at an organization so that the efforts do not go in vain.

If you are a large organization trying to implement an automation strategy, Contact Cigniti’s team of test automation experts and our tool agnostic test automation framework that consists of a huge library of keywords that helps you build your tests quickly and efficiently, and seamlessly integrates with leading commercial and open source tools.