How Do You Calculate Your ROI On Test Automation With Selenium?
Cross browser testing has been a type of testing which requires a tremendous amount of effort and time. The process of testing your web-app over different browsers, operating systems, devices, screen resolutions to evaluate the rendering of your web content for a variety of your audience is an activity. Especially, if approached manually. Automated cross browser testing with Selenium can help you save the time of routine test activities, helping you cut short on regression testing. However, people seldom like changes. If manual testing is popular in your organization, the management will obviously raise questions when you ask them to implement test automation.
Test automation although highly beneficial may often prove to be expensive, but is it worth the cost? That is one question which you may find yourself struggling with while convincing the higher management. You will be required to present an effective ROI on test automation with Selenium while developing a web application, highlighting the benefits of automation testing with Selenium for automated cross browser testing of a web application by making it faster with less manual labor.
In this article, we shall discuss different metrics to evaluate ROI on test automation with Selenium, and techniques for calculating ROI covering the basics as well as advanced techniques.
Metrics For Evaluating ROI On Test Automation With Selenium
You as well as your team members can consider certain metrics and measurements which will help you analyze the ROI on test automation with Selenium as you plan to start automation testing from scratch of your web application. These metrics could differ from one organization to another. Why? Well, it is a matter of prioritization, there are different metrics such as the number of defects detected, time gain or test coverage directly influence risk, cost, quality, and delivery schedule of your project. Some organizations may prioritize the number of defects detected, as they may believe, that quantity will lead to quality. Some may do vice-versa, as for them quality means everything. What’s your take? What do you think is more crucial in the debate of quality vs quantity of test cases. Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.
With that said, identifying key metrics to calculate ROI on test automation with Selenium is critical for you, before you step into the discussion with higher management.
Scope Of Test Automation With Selenium
We know we can’t perform a 100% test automation. Well, how much-automated cross browser testing can your perform is a question that needs a lot of thought process? If you wish to perform automated cross browser testing for your web-app then you would have to think and prioritize which browsers, & OS should you be covering in your test cases? Because you can’t cover every scenario. The total number of possible scenarios could lead to hundreds or even thousands of test cases. If your automation test script is as long as that then it may take you quite a considerable amount of time on a daily basis evaluation of your web application or website.
In short, this is where you need to compare between the total count of automated test cases vs the total count of test cases where you can implement automation.
In case you wish to reduce time on complex test suites then you can also go for parallel testing with Selenium Grid. That way, you can execute multiple test scripts, simultaneously. However, for that as well you may need to think about how many concurrent or parallel sessions would be good enough for your requirements? You can do so by our concurrency calculator.
Improvement in this metric signifies that the teams can find the defect faster and fix them quickly, thus leading to low risk and high ROI on test automation with Selenium.
How Much Time Would You Save?
With Agile, there are weekly or biweekly deliverables along with frequent changes in requirements. The importance of regression testing in that scenario, increases. Implementing automated regression test cases will reduce the time required for testing, thereby, gaining more time to invest in development or working on another sprint. Saving time is a priority for almost every organization, especially startups, who need to scale their web-application quickly. Is time one of your concerns for evaluating ROI on test automation?
Bandwidth Of Your Resources
We know that test automation with Selenium will help you to market your web-application quickly. However, no organization would prefer if their employees sit idle for the majority of their time, waiting for their script to complete. Calculating ROI on test automation with Selenium requires a thorough effort analysis of every automation & manual tester you have got on board.
Investment Budget Over Resources & Tools
Test automation sure saves time and effort. However, it involves a tradeoff with pricing. You need to think about how much budget you can comfortably allocate over expenses around tools, every organization, especially startups, who need to scale their web-application quickly. Is time one of your concerns for evaluating ROI on test automation?
Total Defect Count
The total defect count after each regression cycle gets completed gives an indication of the product quality and how much effective automation testing is for the specific project.
Figuring out the True ROI for Automation Testing
Based on the number of regression cycles that need to be executed during the project’s lifetime, the true ROI can shift to a positive zone. ROI is usually calculated by the following formula:
ROI = (Manual Testing cost – Automated testing cost)/Automated testing cost
But the classic method is not valid anymore with agile and DevOps coming in the market. Also, this metric is not realistic since the count of manual tests can never be the same as automated tests. For calculating the true value of ROI of test automation with Selenium automation on the basis of quantity is not an option preferred by many. But it is also not entirely neglected.
Defect Quality
This, in my opinion, is a very important metric for calculating ROI on test automation with Selenium. I believe, that the whole point of test automation with Selenium is to not erase the need for manual testers in the project. The point of automation testing is to reduce the amount of time consumption from a tester’s narrow schedule, so they could come up with more out of the box test cases. Improving the quality of your test case will definitely help you shape your web-application for better.
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