Software testing is an integral process of the software life development cycle. It ensures that you are creating a high-quality software application that is in line with the demands of the clients. You can either use an automated testing approach or a manual process. The choice depends on the test cases you would like to execute.
Test automation is different from manual testing in different ways. Automated testing results are more accurate and are released faster than the manual process as automated testing tools allow testing of several devices at the same time and save processing time.
With less human involvement in the testing process, very few errors are likely to occur with the automated testing approach. On the other hand, a manual approach can be full of mistakes as humans are highly involved in the whole testing process.
You can be more productive when using the automated testing approach than when working with the manual approach. This is because the number of test cases that you can achieve within a day is higher than when using testers.
Reducing testing time and cost
Reducing testing time and cost depends on the approach that you will use for the whole testing process. So, which one can you use between test automation and manual testing to save more time and cost?
To understand this, several tips can be incorporated for each of them to ascertain which process saves more on cost and time. Below are the top tips to reduce testing time and the overall cost of the whole process.
Run tests in parallel
The parallel testing approach can be made manually or with automation tools. In this case, testers usually launch their multiple tests on disparate devices and browser configurations simultaneously. Unlike when executing atomic tests sequentially, you can run tests in parallel and save more on time and cost.
When test cases are run sequentially, it becomes challenging to complete and negate any potential cost-benefit. But which process is more efficient, automated, and manual, when test cases are executed in parallel?
It’s more cost-effective to test cases in parallel through automated testing with several virtual machines and actual device combinations. It will help reduce the burden of maintaining the test environment, which is costly.
Set clear testing goals and requirements
To determine the process that can help you save more time and cost, you must look at the testing requirements. What are the testing requirements of automated testing or manual testing? If you can easily and quickly determine this, you can be sure to set clear testing goals for each process.
In most cases, manual testing is often resource-intensive and takes a lot of time to complete. Even with all these resources and time, the whole process may end up inefficient.
This is why you need to perform quality assurance checks and elicit the process’s project requirements and goals. It’s easier to set more precise goals with the automated software testing approach than with the manual approach.
Hence, you can save a lot of time and minimize the cost of the whole process. Just ensure that your quality assurance testers agree with you on all the activities that are to be done and the number of processes that should be followed with the cost.
Start testing early
This is one of the strategies that can save you a lot of time and money spent on the whole testing process. When you discover defects early, you can easily solve them than when you uncover them when they have already spread in wide areas of the application. It will even cost you more as the design and the architectural processes involved are very costly.
So, perform regular checks on the software to detect bugs and other defects as early as possible. If you detect them when they are too minimal, the testers will take a short time to work on the defects.
That said, you must determine which process is more expensive, between manual and automated testing. Automated testing saves more time, and it’s very cost-effective if you start your testing process early than the manual approach. Even if you start early and choose the manual approach, the cost will be high and will take a lot of time.
Apply test-driven development
Test-driven development (TDD) involves writing unit tests before the code you will use for the testing. Start with writing the unit tests for the small functionalities of the software application.
With this approach, you can prevent scope creep, which increases the project’s requirement and uncontrolled growth of the scope of work.
With test-driven development, you will be able to improve the readability of the code, which helps you create a robust architecture to simplify the process of adding new features and changing the existing code. Testers also prevent bugs when they use this approach in their testing.
So, which testing process is cost-effective and can help save more time with test-driven deployment? Test automation can be more effective in the prevention of bugs and the writing of test scripts, and this contributes to saving more time during the software development process. With manual testing, your product will likely have more bugs and defects, which will take more time to resolve, and the cost will also be high.
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