The Test Automation Dilemma: Should You Automate Your Tests and When?

For many businesses navigating quality assurance and software testing, the ongoing dilemma remains—should you stick with manual testing or dive into test automation? While test automation is a great way to streamline processes and boost software efficiency, deciding to automate is just the beginning. The next challenge is figuring out when and what to automate. In this blog, we’ll guide you through these tough decisions by helping you evaluate your team, capacity, and the unique needs of your software.

Should you replace manual testing with automated testing?

To automate or not to automate? That's the constant question in software testing. While trends may sway opinions, the answer invariably remains: it depends.

The suitability of test automation depends on the needs of an organization, its teams, and the software under test. It's important to note early on that, contrary to popular belief, automating everything is neither possible nor valuable. Test automation is a software testing approach that helps organizations remain continuously vigilant and mitigate software risks. However, it is impossible to mitigate every risk, especially unexpected ones. Put in a different way, test automation helps check for known unknowns, but not unknown unknowns.

Our suggestion is to pair comprehensive automation strategies with skilled manual testing to achieve best results and ensure high-quality software. However, before jumping into test automation, there are the three key factors that you should take into account before automating:

1. Team capabilities
2. Type of software 
3. Value proposition

Once these key factors are laid out and understood, an organization will have a good understanding of where it needs to start. Let’s expand on and weigh in each factor.

Assess your team’s skills and capabilities

It's important to remember that at its core, test automation is essentially a software development project. This means that you will need team members with specific skills, typically QA engineers with development experience—or QA automation engineers. However, finding these skills isn’t always easy. So it's important to assess your internal team's capabilities. But what if your team lacks these skills? Don’t worry, there are several solutions to consider:

• Hiring automation engineers inhouse and integrating them into the organization
• Upskilling existing team members
• Outsourcing automated testing to an external partner 
• Onboarding a low-code/no-code automation tool
• Collaborating with your developers to have them start building a test automation framework

You might be interested in: QA as a Service (QAaaS): What Is It and What Are the Key Benefits?

Your choice ultimately depends on your team’s aptitude and capacity, budget, and available organizational support. Once you’ve considered these factors, you will be ready to identify the best route to take to automation.

Consider the type of software and platform 

The type of software you’re testing plays a significant role in shaping your testing approach. For example, testing healthcare applications or critical systems like medical devices may require exhaustive testing, while e-commerce platforms or hospitality apps will have different priorities. It is also important to consider factors like platform coverage—be it web testing, mobile testing, desktop testing, or browser testing—when planning your automation strategy. By understanding your team’s needs and the needs of your software, you will be more adept at pinpointing the areas where automation can add the most value. 

Make sure automation will add value to your project

Even though test automation is a valuable tool, it’s simply not possible to automate everything—nor should it be. Some types of testing, like exploratory testing, are more effective when done manually. That's why it's important to identify where automation can add the most value.

One formula for identifying what to automate is to prioritize your needs. Start by automating the tests you run most often, then the most critical tests, and finally the tests that are difficult or time-consuming to do manually, like automated regression testing and performance testing. Of course, this is easier said than done. The key to get the most out of test automation is to identify which tests can and should be automated and align them with your overall quality assurance strategy. 

There are other ways to plan and prioritize which tests should be automated. Here are a few alternative approaches:

• Risk-based. Focus on automating high-risk tests first.  This approach requires you to create a matrix that lists your tests from highest to lowest priority.
• Safety-critical. If you’re in an industry that is governed by regulatory guidelines, it’s essential to consider these guidelines when choosing what to test—and later which tests to automate. Choose automation to handle complex and time-consuming tests more efficiently and free up team members.
• General approach. Your testers will be the ones who know best where test automation can save time and free up resources, so involving them in helping you identify repetitive or time-consuming tasks is a great approach.

Additionally, leveraging test management systems can provide data-driven insights into what can be automated, allowing you to make more informed decisions.

Read our case study on how TestDevLab helped BTA successfully set up and implement test automation

To automate or not to automate?

Once you’ve assessed your team's capabilities, considered the type of software, and thought about the added value of test automation to your business, the next step is to decide whether automated testing is the right fit for you and your project, and which methods will best support your overall quality assurance strategy.

When applied strategically, automation is a powerful ally, enhancing your testing processes and freeing up resources. If you still need help or expert teams to help with the scope of your testing, TestDevLab has over 500 ISTQB-certified engineers and over a decade of experience in the software quality assurance field.

We can provide you with the resources and expertise needed to ensure you make the right call when implementing test automation in your organization. Visit our website to find out more about our software testing services—or get in touch with us to discuss test automation in more detail and how we can help implement it into your QA processes. Let’s build better software—together!