Increase ROI in your organization with Automation Testing

This article offers answers for below questions with case-study

Why do we need automation s/w testing in organization? 

What if organization does not have fund to purchase license
for expensive automation tools?

In simple way, we can say the core objective of automation is helping to finish any testing\QA task more accurate, easier and faster way with less risk involved for failure. Say for example Tools like
# Functional automation tools QTPro, SilkTest, Canoo, Selenium, VBMacro.
# Load/Stress automation tools LoadRunner, SilkPerformer.
# Cookies reader tools.
# HTTP request / response reader tools.
# File comparison tools.
# Tesecase Management Tools.
# Web Page link / image finder Tools.
# Broken link finder Tools.
and many other tools we can categorize in automation testing fashion to make QA Process more smoother; Automation Testing also used for

Repetitive testing task activities…
As a human nature, manual tester can not perform repetitive tasks more accurately comparing to machine or software automation program. Test data-driven approach is one of the best solutions of automation for repetitive testing. Automation makes "cross browser testing" a peace of cake, you just change configuration file and you are ready to verify features on other browsers.

Is More Reliable…
In the sense of giving feedback more faster and cheaper way. Automation provides excellent feedback in well HTML / XML forms which are also open to plug into our QA statistical system like System that generates Traceability Metrix say for Mercury's Quality Center or Borland's SilkCenter and we can make qa process more transparent toward organization. Anyone can execute automation scripts at anytime, most of the times they are triggered at night. Automation always pays back; when new build comes in qa, we execute smoke automation scripts to check build health and trigger regression automation scripts to verify old features work with new features as expected in more faster and cheaper way comparing to manual testing – It works like safety net where not only qa team but development team also gets more confidence and open doors to feedback SDLC loop earlier.

Is the best candidate for some testing tasks like…
Simulate virtual users that generates load / stress on server to check page throughputs, bandwidth,CPU utilization, Memory leaks and other quality parameters.
To Compare large files / database objects like Validate pictures or binary files with their expected ones.
Gathering QA statistics like Metrix and Millstones.

There are many other reasons why organization should have automation testing, we will discuss later on. One other thought I have in my mind if organization does not have fund to purchase expensive license for tools (like qtp, silktest winrunner..)
then what qa people can do? In this scenarios, It is a good opportunity to use freeware tools. My past articles can help you guys to evaluate freeware tools

"Automation Test Strategies" -- find tool selection quality parameters
"Tool Evaluation"

You can find freeware tools on http://www.opensourcetesting.org/ which sure be helpful for qa process in your organization, couple of good tools I like to recommend are as below

Functional \ Regression Automation test tools
In my past projects experience, I have successfully established an automation framework with freeware tools – WebTest Canoo and Selenium.

WebTest Canoo is on XML\Ant based tool understands HTTP request and response of the site. Everything is xml based; your test-cases, test-driver and even it produces result in xml file.

Selenium is also a good tool available as freeware.It comes with browser extension; It has its own api function library; record/play utility in built. Selenium tests run directly in a browser, just as real users. It has in built script language conversion utility that can currently support writing tests in Java, .NET, Perl, Python and Ruby.

Test Management Tools
TestLink(http://testlink.org/wordpress),
QA Track(http://www.qatrack.org/),
Bugzilla Test Runner(http://sourceforge.net/projects/testrunner/)
I like TestLink tool most as it offers functionalities such as
# Test Case history/ versioning
# Unlimited structure of Test Specification
# Support for other databases (SQL standard, generalized DB interdace)
# Improved user management (editable)
# Attachments
# Revision of Standard terminology
# Enhanced reports
# XML import/export
# Custom fields for Test Cases
# Get Traceability Metrix and Milestones
# Can create suites like regression suite or smoke suite for the test
and then create build in testlink that allow us to attach testcases
in qa, we can also assign to team for execution and testlink gives
statistics for testing progress as well.

Defect Tracking Tools
Bugzilla(www.bugzilla.org/),
BugNet(http://www.bugnetproject.com/),
Jira(http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/)
Jira is an award winner professional issue tracking web tool. Although
it is not freeware tool but it is less expensive.

Miscellaneous tools
FreeMind is a premier free mind-mapping software written in Java. You can create test-scenarios in more easy way and publish them into hierarchical presentation in XML/HTML format.
Eclipse to compare files.
HTTPWatch tool can read HTTP headers, cookies, caching and POST data.
IECookiesView v1.70 can read IE cookies details.
Markup Validation W3 Service checks the markup validity of Web documents in HTML, XHTML, SMIL, MathML, etc.
Link Checker - Checks anchors (hyperlinks) in a HTML/XHTML document. Useful to find broken links, etc.

In my future post, I will share my customized automation tools that made to satisfy more specific testing task.