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58 P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | S U M M E R 2 0 2 1 A S K I N G T H E R I G H T Q U E S T I O N S Benefits Of Test Automation: • Faster Feedback cycle – with manual testing, you can only be as quick as the team can manually run the tests. Once the tests are automated, they can be run off-hours and lengthy test scripts can run very fast. Overnight testing to provide larger unattended test packs to execute. • Saves Time – automated testing can be used to continuously validate applications with little pressure on the team, which leaves more time for higher value quality activities, increasing test coverage, optimizing the current test suite or adding features, there's less stress on the team. It can provide greater functional test coverage in the same or less time. Repeatable tests ensure faster testing of multiple builds and faster test coverage across multiple test environments. Testing reports can include results automatically received. • Reduced Business Expenses – fewer resources are spent on manual testing offsets tools and maintenance. • Higher Test Coverage – manual testing limits how many tests you can verify. • Reusability of Test Suite – after the initial investment, it is straightforward to use test cases for other projects. • Better Insights – review of automated test results allows digging deeper into application challenges and finding root causes for failures, further queries into other systems and faster triaging. • Improved Accuracy – manual testers make mistakes and sometimes interpret test scripts inconsistently, especially if they are unfamiliar with the systems. Automated testing provides the same results every time, so fewer mistakes are likely. • Enabler – Test Automation is seen as one of the enablers of DevOps and Agile for larger teams. Having a good awareness of these benefits of automation will help you articulate the need for test automation, proposing a transition to automation or understanding the needs of implementation teams. They are also a good source of information for creating KPIs, ensure the benefits of test automation are realized. Challenges Of Test Automation — It's not a Silver Bullet • Unrealistic expectations – the perception is that automating solves all problems of team efficiency. People are often overoptimistic on achievement possibilities. It is important to look at all options (no automation, some automation done internally, use of external managed services and/or creating a full internal test automation team), and manage expectations re timeframes and test coverage baselines. • Poor testing practice – if current manual testing practices are poor and overall quality and test maturity is not there, automation of the tests will be unsuccessful: poor results come from poor tests. Test automation should be used for accelerating good testing. "Repeatable tests ensure faster testing of multiple builds and faster test coverage across multiple test environments."

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