How to best utilize our Automation ROI Calculator for Calculating Test Automation ROI
New software and features roll out every day in a competitive market that demands shortened time to market and quality assurance cycles. In this technology-driven era, conducting frequent manual tests, like regression testing, is time-consuming. Also, you cannot compromise on the quality of your product at the same time. That’s where automation comes in. It plays a crucial role and is inevitable in the software testing industry. With automation QA, test cases take less time to execute regression testing cycles.
But remember, automation testing cannot benefit your business all the time. You should analyze the condition of using automation in terms of return of investment (ROI) and check where test automation is beneficial. Many QA providers, such as QASource, provide an automation ROI calculator to enable their clients to calculate the cost of implementing customized testing strategies.
But to better utilize the ROI calculator for automation testing, certain aspects need your attention.
Test Automation ROI Metrics and Measures
You can analyze the test automation value by using the metrics and measures like test coverage, defects found, and time saved with automation. It will also help your project team members and stakeholders in identifying the key areas where they can improve by implementing automation testing, which would result in a better return on investment. To calculate ROI for test automation, you should consider metrics such as test coverage, defects found, and time gained. Good test automation metrics are related to main project attributes such as cost, schedule, quality, and risk.
Test Automation Coverage
It signifies the number of automated test cases vs the total number of test cases that you can automate. By improving the test coverage area, you can detect defects faster and teams can fix them as soon as possible, which would lead to high quality and low risk.
Number of Detects Per Regression Cycle
The total number of bugs detected during every regression cycle shows the product quality and displays the automation procedure’s effectiveness.
Total Time Required for Regression Cycle
As businesses adopt agile and DevOps methodologies, they release daily and weekly builds in a product life cycle. Due to this, the need for regression cycles has become obvious. By automating regression testing, you can cut time significantly. It allows QA teams to run test cases multiple times in a shorter duration. It will reduce the overall project cost and schedule.
There is always a high need for test automation, but with every automated test cycle, you will save cost over test cases and after certain test cycles, each testing cycle cost saving will add up to the initial cost of test automation. You should detect this inflection point based on total test cycles.
Test Automation ROI
The test automation ROI can have a positive impact depending upon the total regression cycles needed for the lifetime of the software product. You can use a simple formula for calculating classic ROI for testing automation:
ROI = (Cost of manual testing – Automation cost)/ Automation cost
One thing you should know is that you cannot compare automation testing with manual testing. This formula might look right. You cannot execute the same amount of manual tests as automated tests in one go. The true benefit of automation ROI value is:
- Improvement in test effectiveness
- Decrease in time to market
- Improved test efficiency
You should also consider the cost related to the maintenance of automated test cases. Each software or mobile application requires regular updates. All such changes affect test automation scripts, which you need to update based on code changes in your product.
Conclusion
Automation testing produces tangible results. It is also a good investment for your business in terms of lowering bug fixing costs, improving software quality, and reducing per-hour testing costs. But to determine its true worth, you need to have a tool to calculate how much it will cost you and what will be the ROI for the same. Automation ROI calculator by QASource allows you to determine why investing in automation testing technology would be a best practice for your business. To know more about customized and budget-friendly test automation practices, contact QASource now.