How Test Automations Impact the Performance of Your Organisation
Making decisions about investments requires strategic thinking. Once the executives have prepared a scorecard and aligned about the key performance indicators (KPIs), the managers plan the budget for software development. At this moment, sometimes a strategic set of projects is forgotten: test automations.
Test automation is the use of software to verify whether or not a product has defects. It is possible to automatically test a component, an integration of components or the end-to-end product. If it is automated then it is done precisely and quickly. In the context of Information Technology, test automations mitigate the risk of defects and convert into more efficiency in software development, which is of utmost importance to achieve the organisational goals.
Poor software quality causes the organisation to lose money on rework, does not free up time for innovations and delays the implementation of business strategies. Beyond these aspects, software failures impact the lives of people and may damage the reputation of the organisation causing intangible losses. The classic news adage “if it bleeds, it leads” applies; negative content from news companies is likely to spread farther than positive content, as concludes a study about news organisations’ negative tweets.
The investment made on infrastructure and human resources for test automations may determine the success or failure of a project and therefore of the business strategy. Without test automations, the development gradually slows and the risk of failures increases as more manual work is required. When asked about the factors that contribute to poor software quality, 40% of the software developers surveyed in 2019 attributed it to manual processes, and 39% said it was due to insufficient software testing.
Developing automated tests means developing software. Tests mostly require infrastructure, human resources and processes. Ideally, tests are made to mitigate the risk that software changes convert into incidents in the real environment. To do this, the tests run in the building pipeline every time something is developed. Appropriate infrastructure is required for this. At the same time, qualified professionals need to be in place.
Obtaining Results from Test Automations
The risk of failure is impossible to eliminate but can be mitigated. For every defect, there is a decision regarding the cost of solving it versus the cost of a possible incident. However, the issues found by an automated test should be solved before releasing a new version of the product, because an automated test programmatically mitigates risks on critical functionalities.
Senior managers should provide the financial resources in order to make the test automation projects viable. On the other hand, technical managers should require from the professionals that they cover the most important aspects of the product based on risks. As an example, at Just Eat Takeaway the main requirement is that a customer should be able to order food.
Scalability, maintainability and processes are equally important also for the context of automated tests in order to respond fast to the demands of the market while mitigating risks. It is a common mistake to develop an automated test that requires manual action to run, such as pressing a play button, generating a report or alerting about the test findings. Technical managers should require zero manual processes for running automated tests.
Technical managers should also observe how the testing approaches adhere to the software development process. Ideally, tests start as early as possible in the software development lifecycle so to work in a preventive manner. However, it is equally important to implement mechanisms for monitoring the systems’ environments through the use of tools that track the logs and the performance of applications in the real environment. High managers should invest in the use of these tools as well.
The Return of Investment
An approach for measuring the return of investment on test automations is to financially calculate the impact of software defects on the organisation, which should reduce along time. Another approach is to track the percentage of time spent on failures. Also, it is possible to measure the speed of the software development team and compare it before versus after the implementation of automated tests.
Beyond the financial results, the implementation of test automations helps create a culture of quality at the organisation given that all of the team members are active users of the outcomes. Finally, leaders may expect faster software development to support their business and with higher chances of success.
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