NEED FOR AUTOMATION If an organization needs to choose a testing tool, the following benefits of automation must be considered.

Reduction of testing effort In verification and validation strategies, numerous test case design methods have been studied. Test cases for a complete software may be hundreds of thousands or more in number. Executing all of them manually takes a lot of testing effort and time. Thus, execution of test suits through software tools greatly reduces the amount of time required.

Reduces the testers’ involvement in executing tests Sometimes executing the test cases takes a long time. Automating this process of executing the test suit will relieve the testers to do some other work, thereby increasing the parallelism in testing efforts.

Facilitates regression testing As we know, regression testing is the most time- consuming process. If we automate the process of regression testing, then testing effort as well as the time taken will reduce as compared to manual testing.

Avoids human mistakes Manually executing the test cases may incorporate errors in the process or sometimes, we may be biased towards limited test cases while checking the software. Testing tools will not cause these problems which are introduced due to manual testing.

Reduces overall cost of the software As we have seen that if testing time increases, cost of the software also increases. But due to testing tools, time and therefore cost can be reduced to a greater level as testing tools ease the burden of the test case production and execution.

Simulated testing Load performance testing is an example of testing where the real-life situation needs to be simulated in the test environment. Sometimes, it may not be possible to create the load of a number of concurrent users or large amount of data in a project. Automated tools, on the other hand, can create millions of concurrent virtual users/data and effectively test the project in the test environment before releasing the product.

Internal testing Testing may require testing for memory leakage or checking the coverage of testing. Automation tools can help in these tasks quickly and accurately, whereas doing this manually would be cumbersome, inaccurate, and time-consuming.

Test enablers While development is not complete, some modules for testing are not ready. At that time, stubs or drivers are needed to prepare data, simulate environment, make calls, and then verify results. Automation reduces the effort required in this case and becomes essential.

Test case design Automated tools can be used to design test cases also. Through automation, better coverage can be guaranteed, than if done manually.