Traditionally and even as late as 2008, intending to automate your regression testing or certain parts was a hard task. There were several arguments against doing this.
- Automation technology did not cut the mustard. Either too expensive and cumbersome to use or it didn’t have enough features to be useful.
- Development methodology, documentation standards and supporting software was still maturing, placing a further burden of cost, time and resources on managing the automation suites for each development life-cycle.
- The time it took to implement the tool or make changes to the automation tools to cater for the new versions requiring testing
- You needed someone dedicated to run the tools. The investment in this was resource, either by hiring them or training them for the automation tool was debatable given the high turnover of staff in the testing and development arena
- In most cases back then, the automating of regression testing became a whole new project unto itself, where the automation testing cost rivaled in time and cost, actually developing the product, app or website that required regression testing
- Feature rich automation tools that dealt well with error handling was still in its infancy
- And lastly the usual traditional scenario of Test methodology, its benefits and its budget requirements were not given the focus, priority or budget to invest in ‘nice to haves’ – Testing was not understood or valued as much as it is these days.
However fast-forward to 2010/2011 and testing has become a hotbed or activity, there’s tool’s and methodologies galore, testers becoming further skilled and respected as a important addition to complement, work alongside and within development and infrastructure teams.
And as always business units look to cut cost, speed up delivery, and assure quality standards, cue the latest generation of automation test tools; providing everything from load and performance testing, to monitoring services, to providing the real possibility of regression automation and unit test automation.
So why now? All the reasons against automation before don’t predominantly exist any more, there are still some challenges around automation but with careful understanding and management; automating your regression testing should reap you rewards in time, effort and money saved.
Achieving 100% automation would be still unusual these days, however automating 60-70% of your regression test-set should be a good goal to have for your application or website if it has matured enough, as opposed to the 1-30% that we might have managed in the early 2000′s.
Contact Loadverify.com if you wish a consult about automating your regression testing, and keep an eye out for our new regression testing service page and regression testing library options coming out for you in early 2011.
