The Benefits of Automated Software Testing in Businesses

Software testing is fundamental in the development life cycle of software applications.

As a business owner, you need to ensure that designed applications functions properly, meet requirements, and deliver requisite value to end-users. However, the use of manual testing is fast becoming antiquated. Not only is it error-prone and time-consuming, but it is also expensive. Many businesses have turned their sights to automated software testing as a solution to streamline their testing processes.

Why?

Because it enables faster results, and achieves better outcomes.

In this article, we’re discuss the benefits of automated software testing in business, but first, we examine the types of automated testing.

Types of Automated Testing

Several test cases require the use of automation to achieve quality results, and these listed automation tests will improve the quality of your work and boosts the efficiency of your testing.

  1. Functional Testing:

    This is the best suite to test the validity of software systems against functional requirements. This testing is needed to test each function of the software.

  2. Unit Testing:

    This form of testing is used to check the validity of a unit by isolating part of its code to check for accuracy. Unit testing ensures that each unit of the software code performs as expected by testing every individual component. It is usually carried out during the development phase of the software.

  3. Regression Testing:

    Regression testing is used to check if a recent program has not adversely affected existing features or affected functionality in any way. It involves the re-execution of already implemented test cases to ensure they function as expected.

  4. Smoke Testing:

    The goal of smoke testing is to help you discover severe failures by testing the most important functionalities of software. You can use it to confirm the readiness of your software build.

  5. Integration Testing:

    After the unit testing, you should perform an integration test to check individual units of the software. This automated test will expose defects that will hamper the workability of your application.

  6. Black Box Testing:

    The only focus of the testing is the input and output as it doesn’t consider the coding framework. the primary function of this testing is to check for the following;

  • Start-up and termination errors
  • Missing functions
  • Behaviour or performance errors
  • Incorrect functions
  • Interface errors

Benefits of Automated Software Testing

Now that we’ve discussed the core forms of testing, let us delve into the crux of this discourse.

There are numerous benefits of incorporating automation tools when testing for the functionality of the software, let us look into a few of them that can play a key role in the growth of your business.

  1. Automated testing improves testing accuracy:

    Manual errors affect the quality of your product, which is why automated software testing is ideal to produce error-free applications. The efficiency of a manual tester determines the depth and accuracy of your tests, while for automated testing, you can detect wrong entries and manual errors with ease.

  2. It helps you save resources:

    Time is money, and automated software testing can save you time. Software tests have to be repeated oftentimes during development cycles to ensure high quality, and doing that for manual tests means you have to spend extra resources. With automated software testing, you can run frequent tests without additional costs, and reduce the time spent on unproductive tasks. Repetitive testing is a major cause of delay in the developmental process. You can reduce time spent on painstaking repetitive software testing from days to hours with automated software testing

  3. It increases your test coverage:

    You can easily run profound tests in minutes for applications of any size with the click of a button. You can test more features across diverse applications in a short period, which results in better quality and augmented coverage. Automated testing also helps you detect bugs in the developmental stage to curb production issues, which affect user experience.

  4. It enhances business scalability:

    A business that depends on manual testing requires an ever-increasing number of staff to function. Your business can scale through with automated testing, which means you get to function properly without needing to employ a lot of hands.

  5. It boosts the morale of your development team:

    Automated testing helps your development team produce faster results without going through the laborious task of detecting and correcting errors. Your team would spend more time on productive and rewarding projects which in turn boost their confidence and productivity.

  6. It increases your ROI:

    The time and resources spent on repetitive tasks involved in manual testing can hamper your ROI. The use of automated tools will improve your productivity with the use of fewer resources and lesser manpower.

  7. You can reuse the test suite without limits:

    Imagine writing a test script anytime you intend to run a test and doing it repeatedly over time. That would be torturous and time-consuming. The benefit of using automation testing is that you can reuse a script on various tests even if the OS version has been changed on the device.

Let’s look at a typical manual testing technique called cross-browser testing; you would need to write a test case every time you want to test an application.

Automated tests take care of that as you don’t need to go through such repetitive processes till you become mentally exhausted. You can simply reuse a script and save yourself the trouble.

  1. Quick feedback:

    The quicker the development team receives feedback from testers, the swifter they can fix bugs in the code. This is exactly why businesses need to automate software testing so that they can reduce the time needed to complete a feedback cycle for new software features. Test automation also helps eliminate the risk of the software being filled with bugs, which can easily be corrected in the developmental stage, therefore quickening the software’s developmental process.

  2. Automated testing enhances your brand:

    Automated test is one of the best things that can happen to your brand. Testing manually takes an ample amount of time, but with automated tests, you’re sure to save time because of the reusability of test suites. Automation increases your brand quality and recalls value due to its ability to produce error-free software which in turn enables customer retention. The use of automation test also help you save costs of handling and maintaining projects, this means you get more value on money spent.

  3. You would be saving cost:

    Nobody likes to spend a lot of money before getting great results in business, which is why automated testing is an adequate replacement for manual testing. Automated testing saves you a lot of money used in handling projects in the long run because you no longer have to run multiple tests. Your work quality will also be impacted positively due to the elimination of human errors, and the irrelevant needs to fix glitches after the product launch.

  4. Faster time to market:

    The use of automated testing gives your business a competitive advantage by allowing you to capitalize on market opportunities quickly. The ability for automated software testing to give faster, and more accurate results enables your business to release software applications faster without the pointless hassle of retesting. The innovation of automated software testing is a far cry from the limitations of manual testing, which in most cases requires repetitive tests to check for bugs and inevitable human errors.

When are automated tests unnecessary?

As much as we can agree that automated tests save time, effort, and cost of running a business, it is not advisable to entirely rule out manual testing. Several tests and scenarios still require manual testing and strategic thinking that can only be done by humans.

Such tests include:

  • If the automated testing takes longer than actual manual testing, then automation should be ruled out.
  • User experience testing requires the input of actual people who understand human experiences, so using artificial intelligence (AI) in this case is debatable.
  • You don’t need an automated test for test cases that are non-repetitive.
  • Installation and set-up testing.
  • Some applications require strategic thinking, manual testing can be immensely useful for such test cases
  • Ad-hoc based testing
  • End-user usability testing
  • Exploratory testing

Conclusion

Automated software testing is a crucial component of the software development cycle, because of the numerous benefits it can provide for your business. It is a cost-effective, highly efficient, and accurate solution for testing software applications. Automated software testing also improves the quality of your software applications, enables you to launch your software faster by reducing the time you need for testing, and eliminates the risk of software failure.

As businesses continue to rely on software applications, automated software testing will become increasingly important in ensuring that these applications function correctly and efficiently.

Do you need to ensure that there are no bugs or glitches that would make your application defective? Hidden Brains is the solution you need to guarantee a thoroughly tested and safe application.

Don’t leave your reputation to chance. You can evade the risk of losing your customers by investing in quality software testing services from us. You can trust us to provide you with reliable and comprehensive testing services that will help you deliver top-notch software products.

To change the dynamics of your business from jittery to guaranteed, reach out to us on our website or send an email via biz@hiddenbrains.africa