Many organizations say that Test Automation rarely lives up to the expectations. I meet people who claim that it is too expensive or it doesn’t work. My experience with it has been different. I want to share my experience with those who haven’t really discovered the way to get success with Test Automation projects.

Be Realistic

Set realistic goals for automation. Not everything should and can be automated, don’t make any false promises or set wrong expectations which leads to frustration.

Measure

Come up with the right ROI to measure success of automation.

Identify Tool

Perform application POC with different tools and identify the best suitable tool for automation.

Experience

Build a team who has a good experience in test automation and is able to deliver the right solution at the right time.

Change Management

Consider test automation projects like development project where you need to code tests, validate and maintain them.  All your automation deliverables have to be part of Configuration Management tool for tracking and easy maintenance.

Automation Framework

Framework is the heart of an automation project, there should not be any blockages. To avoid the automation project heart-attack, organizations should provide good amount of time to design the architecture which should be more robust, reusable, reliable and scalable.

If all the above key points are followed, one can definitely expect a fair chance of success with the test automation projects. That’s what we have experienced while doing the automation testing for our clients. They were not only able to identify and close bugs, but were able to save on time and resources.