5. Test Tools become Tumbleweed

Symptoms: Many companies spend half a million dollars on test tools only to have the test tools gather dust. Some companies that I have consulted for have indicated that they do not want to automate business processes because it takes “too long” to automate processes or they believe that the test tools are incompatible with their systems, or they had bad experiences with automation in previous releases, etc. 

Most of the time if not always these aforementioned excuses are devoid of merits. Spending half a million on an automated test tool solution that gathers dust does not maximize return on investment and places undue pressure on the functional team to test the system manually.  

Suggestions: Establish an automation framework and hire qualified individuals to build a library of recorded test scripts that can facilitate regression testing, and future software releases. No matter how much test tool vendors “dumb down” their tools you will still need skilled testers who understand programming, development, data driven parameters, correlation, embedding error handling logic, and visual basic concepts since many test tools standardize on visual basic.  

If your project is attempting automation for the first time set up realistic automation goals for instance 40% automation of all business processes before the first release is due for deployment. The objective should be to build a library of recorded test scripts that can be recycled for multiple releases and thus maximize the ROI on your acquired test tools. Once you build a library of test scripts you will find that in fact test tools can shorten the test execution phase, while providing more consistent, reliable and greater coverage for your requirements over manual testing.  

Other uses of test tools include supporting your regression testing needs during standard production maintenance support and for loading training data. The alternative to test automation is manual testing which is susceptible to these problems:

·        Coordination of resources along with their conflicting schedules

·        Expenses associated with bringing resources to the site where the manual testing is occurring

·        Lengthening the period of time need to conduct integration testing

·        Manual testing is not repeatable thus if test scripts need to be re-executed you need to repeat all testing activities with resources who are suddenly unavailable

·        You will not get automatically created test logs that most test tools produce and now you will have to rely on manual test logs which your testing team produces with mixed results.  

The objective is to recognize and realize that test tools can become your friend to ensuring reliability and dependability in a production environment while decreasing reliance on manual testing efforts. Companies that are most likely to be affected by the absence of automated tools are those who are highly regulated in FDA environments and those companies that have SAP variant configuration needs since they have to test their ability to build products with multiple combinations and permutations (i.e. when ordering a car over a website there are many combinations for configuring a new car).