Cross Browser Testing (CBT) is one of the basic ways of testing any web application or software being developed. It requires testing your web apps across different user usage scenarios, varying from one browser type to another, different operating systems, screen resolutions, etc. With this, the process of cross-browser testing overall is time-consuming, as it requires looking beneath the layers extensively to find which aspect might misbehave or malfunction. There are two ways to undertake CBT, one being manually and the other being in an automated manner. With this said, as compared to manual testing, automation testing is more efficient and productive.
Not only that automated testing is faster, but it also marginalizes any possibility of leaving any errors unnoticed. At times with manual testing, it becomes challenging to not miss out on certain errors as oversight or in the process of repeated monotonous checking. To cut short on your regression testing activity, a good way out is automating cross-browser testing with Selenium. Although this helps in saving time on routine activities, there might not be a wider acceptance of this as manual testing is still considered more cost-efficient at many places.
In this article, we will begin by understanding how manual and automated testing are different and what edge automated testing provides. Then, we will understand a few metrics to evaluate test automation ROI with Selenium, its scope and what kind of resources would it take for an organization. We will also analyze a few pitfalls that organizations must avoid when calculating test automation ROI, and then a few pointers on how to maximize your testing effort and ROI with an automated process.
Manual Vs Automated Testing Effort
Although the primary difference between manual and automated testing is self-explanatory, on a use-case scenario, it can be further broken down into various comparisons to better understand.
Let us begin by acknowledging that automated testing is more accurate than manual testing, for the simple reason that there is a significantly higher possibility of human errors in manual testing. In this context, automated testing becomes very accurate for repetitive tasks. However, manual testing has an edge over aspects that need possible human intervention in terms of thinking and making judgments. On the other hand, if automated testing is fed with poorly designed test cases and errors in test scripts, it might lead to further lower accuracy.
Manual testing, as discussed above is cost-effective for complex tasks that require human intervention. Whereas, automated testing is best and well-suited for test cases that are repetitive across multiple test cycles or in another scenario when used across a wide-scale testing scenario. A good example would be regression tests.
Furthermore, manual testing allows QAs to quickly test and see results. Although automation testing takes longer to set up and takes more time overall, but helps with maximum efficiency when tests are done at scale with different inputs and values.
Overall, when it comes to steering a balance between manual and automated testing, no one criterion fits best. The overall factors depend on case-to-case scenarios, particularly around how to test features or products.
Metrics to measure test automation ROI with Selenium
Although it is important to measure all relevant metrics for test automation, but these could highly vary from one organization to another. These metrics will primarily depend on individual use cases, such as test coverage, number of defects detected and at what rate, the amount of time saved, utilization of resources, maintenance effort, number of test cases automated, and overall cost savings. Let us understand these better:
- Test Coverage: These help in measuring the extent to which automated tests cover the overall testing functionality of the software or application being developed. Higher test coverage would mean a more comprehensive suite of tests, thus also reducing any possible risk of undetected issues under development.
- Defect Detection Rate: These help in tracking the number of defects that are resolved through automated tests in comparison to manual testing. Overall, a higher defect detection rate suggests that automated tests are effectively solving issues, and thus significantly reducing the cost of having to fix these later.
- Time Saved: This is a calculative metric of the time saved by automating repetitive test cases in comparison to manual execution. This overall helps quantify the efficiency gains achieved through automating the testing process.
- Resource Utilization: This helps to evaluate the utilization of testing resources, concerning time and people, both before and after implementing automation. Any decrease would indicate improved efficiency.
- Maintenance Effort: This helps in assessing the effort required to maintain and update automated test scripts over time. Higher maintenance would probably mean issues with test script stability.
- Execution Time: This measures the time taken to execute automated test suites in comparison to manual testing. Faster execution means faster release cycles.
- Number of Test Cases Automated: By tracking this metric over a period you can judge the testing progress and coverage expansion. Any increase in this number means ongoing investment and improvement to overall test automation practice.
- Cost Savings: This estimates the cost saved through automation by comparing the expenses associated with manual testing. These are generally achieved in form of reduced testing time, fewer defects in production, and overall optimized resource allocation.
Pitfalls organizations must avoid when calculating test automation ROI
The software development arena has become pretty fast-paced, and organizations are increasingly turning to test automation to add efficiency, and quality while being able to overall reduce their time-to-market. However, it is also very important to remember that to accurately calculating the ROI for test automation requires a careful consideration of several factors, as discussed below. Also, despite the straightforward nature of ROI calculation, many organizations still fall into common pitfalls. Perhaps by understanding these and taking proactive measures will help organizations make more informed decisions with their test automation strategies. Let us understand a few of these general mistakes better:
- Ignoring Manual Testing: When organizations focus solely on automated testing, at times, they happen to overlook the ongoing importance of manual testing. These can especially be around tasks like cross-browser testing where visual defects are also easily detected manually. Moreover, testing that requires human judgment should not be automated.
- Short-Term Focus: Organizations often fail to capture the long-term benefits of ROI, when they pick to measure ROI over a short period. It is worth noting that organizations must analyze how a certain testing method is impacting in the long run, than on a short-term period. Often a 6-month analysis would only measure the repeated analysis on the testing front, while a considerable 3-5 years time frame would constitute everything from testing to debugging, launching, market release, etc.
- Misalignment with Organizational Capabilities: Although this is a less looked-into matter, considerable success in automation testing a lot depends on aligning the team’s skills well with the chosen tools how the application works, and its overall complexity. It is in your best interest to ensure that your team has the necessary knowledge of both the product being developed and the automation tool being worked on.
- Neglecting Test Maintenance: Test maintenance is an important aspect of automation ROI calculation and is often overlooked. Say, you are using Selenium for cross-browser testing. So, once you have implemented a testing strategy, you will need to regularly monitor it and cross-check to upgrade and maintain test cases. Overall, as your application evolves, test cases will need regular updates and maintenance efforts to remain effective.
- Lack of Proper Documentation: If you are not documenting your automation scripts and processes, it can lead to knowledge gaps and inefficiencies. Overall, the best practice is to streamline your documentation stack. This will not only ensure continuity but will also facilitate easy onboarding while minimizing any risks associated with staff turnover who join late and get added to the ongoing projects.
How to Increase Test Coverage with Selenium
We discussed, how organizations often end up failing in effectively assessing the ROI of test automation. Let us proceed to discuss some action items for maximizing test automation ROI with Selenium.
Begin by implementing automation for new test cases. This is a considerably important factor to consider, especially when migrating from manual to automated testing. For example, if you are beginning to use Selenium WebDriver for automated cross-browser testing, you can:
- Begin by calculating the number of test cases that require automation. This is to better analyze the need for automation vs manual testing across all test scenarios.
- Avoid migrating all test cases to automation – at times easy tests and those requiring human judgment can be held back and be assigned to manual testing.
- Keep a tap on the hourly cost or daily timesheet of the testers undertaking test execution.
- Prioritize automating regression testing – this mostly involves repetitive testing of old test cases, to check that any newly added functionality has not created a bug or malfunctioning. Over time when applications grow with in-depth architecture layers, sticking to manual testing methods for regression testing will significantly cause cash burn.
- Try undertaking all devices and models – while you implement test automation, it is important to understand that your users have a variety of choices to browse your web application on. To improve the quality of your application, you must cover hundreds of browser types and devices available in the market – a feasible approach for which becomes automation testing. You can begin by defining a browser compatibility testing matrix for the same.
Conclusion
To summarise, a few best practices to increase coverage scope include undertaking tests such as unit tests, smoke tests, regression tests, and defect leakage count. Whilst establishing a pipeline to accommodate all of these can be extensively difficult, concerning both time and money, it is important to effectively note how test automation can add value to QA operations. Over the years in fast-paced development, agility is a key factor for stakeholders. Getting a head start over the competition is a key focus area, and automation testing best comes to rescue with it. You can choose LambdaTest as a go-to platform to orchestrate your test automation needs. The cross-browser testing platform covers over 3000 browser types and devices, effectively covering all marketplace models and variants to perform your regression testing.
