Scriptless Test automation solution: How to use it to improve your testing ROI?

Scriptless Test automation solution: How to use it to improve your testing ROI?

“If you have bad tests, automation can help you do bad testing faster.”— James Marcus Bach

How do we ensure that the test automation is working as a saviour and not adding to the testing woes? One wrong step in this direction and be assured to lose precious time and energy. Additionally, wrong automation will make the quality of the software suffer badly.

Organizations are spending on automation for better software quality and a good ROI(Return on Investment) with time. This has to be understood that when we are creating automation frameworks and scripts, we cannot expect an immediate ROI.

Since the time, money, and energy outweigh the immediate returns. When the test automation is used diligently, over a period of time organizations start receiving the ROI.

We can achieve this by choosing correct test cases and test automation tools, using them to automate repeating activities like regression testing and not one-time runs. The generic formula of ROI is:

ROI % = ( (Income – Investments) / Investments) * 100

When we are talking about automation we need to take into account the automation income and expenses as:

Automation ROI % = ((Income from automation – Investments on automation) / Investments on automation)* 100

We can understand from the above formula that if we are successful in the below two tasks, we can increase the ROI:

1. Increasing the income: This means the gains by adopting automation testing i.e., saved costs, increase in quality, save time, etc. If we can increase these gains we can increase the ROI.

2. Decreasing the Investments: This means the time, cost, energy that is put into the automation testing. In the case of scriptless test automation solutions, the investment can be lowered easily. Hence, the ROI can be increased immediately, without waiting for a certain time period as in conventional automation testing.

When the testing team writes the automation scripts using a programming language, it takes quite a chunk of testing timelines. However, today the software needs to be delivered as quickly as possible with great quality.

Here, a scriptless automation solution is beneficial for all the stakeholders. Because this is the only way to decrease time-to-market and provide the best quality possible in CI/CD environments.

In this article, we will discuss how scriptless test automation solutions can help you improve your testing ROI. To that effect, some points that we will discuss are as given below:

1. Scriptless test automation helps in quicker test automation

2. It supports amalgamation of business and technical people and skills

3. Scriptless testing tools help saving costs immensely in terms of time, skills, resources, and sometimes even space

4. Risk-reduction is an important feature of scriptless test automation solution

And then we will also discuss how to translate these into implementable steps.

How scriptless test automation solutions can help you improve your testing ROI

1. Quicker test automation

The most time exhaustive activities during test automation are:

1. Writing test scripts

2. Running test cases

3. Maintenance of test scripts

In conventional test automation, there needs to be a script in place for all the activities – test scripts, reports, test data, cross-browser tests, logs, and test evidence.

Even if the automation engineers are experts in their craft, all these activities are bound to take time. Time is the most precious commodity when we are talking about software deliveries.

In the case of scriptless tools, testing teams need not create the whole framework from scratch. All their testing needs are already covered in the testing solution created by experts.

The shift-left testing enables advanced test case creation even before the application is developed. The testing can start immediately when the smallest piece of software is available. Tools like Testsigma support the shift-left testing approach for faster and early test case creation.

2. An amalgamation of business and technical people

Scriptless test automation solutions are designed keeping in mind the inclusion of technical and non-technical people. Which is quite the opposite of what we have seen till today. 

Testing by business analysts and other non-technical stakeholders? Yes, it is possible, very easily. If you know the application workflows, you can write the test cases, this is the only eligibility you require.

Also, the software people are enabled to communicate better with the business people, which enhances clarity amongst them. This results in supercharged development and testing cycles.

3. Saving costs

A very important feature of scriptless test automation solutions is that they save costs in multiple other areas as compared to code-intensive tools for test automation. Let’s see how. 

i. Saves costs in terms of skill requirements: With scriptless test automation, the tester/team member need not have any prior programming skills. This reduces the need for training and the time and money associated with it. The project need not hire experts for a specific automation tool, which leads to saving money again.

ii. Saves costs in terms of time spent: As we have seen earlier, with scriptless automation tools we need not build a test automation framework from scratch using programming languages/scripts. Having to do anything that is code-related requires more time, and when code is moved out of the picture, that time is saved.

iii. Sometimes saves cost in terms of space requirements: These days, there are scriptless test automation solutions that help reduce space requirements by providing cloud for test automation, test execution. Because it is cloud, it is highly scalable too. You can reduce or increase your requirements and pay according to what you use.

The cloud services are also provided for cross-browser testing by providing cloud-based device labs. So, you don’t need to invest in setting up in-house device labs.

4. Risk reduction

The scriptless test automation solutions help us to create, execute and maintain the test scripts easily and quickly. This in turn leaves the QA team with valuable time for other important activities like – exploratory, negative, and ad-hoc testing.

This results in uncovering the potential bugs which were hidden during automation test runs. This will help the team to attain a high-quality software delivery which is the ultimate goal of all the stakeholders involved.

Some implementable Steps to increase test automation ROI with a Scriptless Solution

1. Usability of automation tools: Make sure that the codeless automation testing tool you choose can automate the test cases for your project. For this, you should know what are the type of test cases you need to automate and then should try automating those test cases. This is where you can use a trial product.

Try Testsigma for scriptless test automation for free

2. Availability of support: If you are facing issues and you get stuck, then it would result in you losing precious time. Thus, the tool you choose should be able to provide support on short notice and help you resolve your problems as soon as possible.

3. Consider the cost: While choosing a test automation tool, your end goal is to achieve ROI. So, you should consider the cost of everything involved –

  • Setup time
  • Learning time
  • Resources required to implement
  • Time required to automate
  • Resources required to execute
  • Setup required for third-party integrations

Open-source automation tools provide free software, however, the above-mentioned costs can add to the final costs too much. It is crystal clear that these costs are going to decrease the ROI tremendously. It is always a wise decision to consider the above costs before starting the automation of tests in a project.

4. Test maintenance: The centralized repository of all testing scripts, data, and other artifacts makes the maintenance of tests easy. Some scriptless test automation solutions such as Testsigma provide auto-healing for certain failures, this helps to save a lot of time and money.

5. Special Features: There are distinct features that these intelligent scriptless test automation solutions provide:

  • Test case creation tracking 
  • Execution build by build
  • Versioning support 
  • Peer review

These features can help testers improve their testing cycle time, test coverage, quality of test cases, and cost in the long run. 

6. Automate the right test cases: Having all the features for the right implementation of test automation is one thing while being able to use all of them effectively. Correct use of them is only possible if you choose your test cases wisely. Below are some kinds of test cases that you should aim at automating first:

  • Automate the repetitive tests: The tests that take you more time and require more test execution time should be automated first.
  • High priority and severity tests: The test cases that rank high on priority and severity are the ones that need to pass first, so they should always be automated first.
  • Test like your user would: The first rule of testing is to test your product like your user would because those are the scenarios that would be executed the most. So, the same rule should be applied to automation as well.

Conclusion

Calculation of ROI is dependent on several factors and therefore it is crucial to select the accurate pointers while calculating it for automation testing. However, one thing is for sure – the selection of a correct scriptless test automation solution is beneficial for all the stakeholders- marketing, business, development, testing.

Eventually, it will result in a quality product delivered quickly which is the sole purpose of everyone involved.  A test automation solution like Testsigma is a brilliant choice since it is AI-based, uses NLP for test case writing, requires no prior knowledge of coding, supports parallel testing, and integrates with third-party tools easily.

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