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6 Critical Reasons Why You Can't Afford To Delay Automating Your Software Testing

Critical Issue Number 4: Improve the Productivity of the Entire Development Team

Quality Assurance Test Automation supports the improvement of developer productivity. It doesn't really matter what development methodology is deployed. The ability to test a new build of the application over night and report the test results the next morning is the key factor to achieving productivity improvement. The developers can quickly fix the problems before developing more features on top of defective code.

"The collaboration between the Ardais Software Development Team and qaSignature brought immediate tangible results that quadrupled development team productivity, an accomplishment for which Ardais received the CIO 100 Award in 2003."
Martin Ferguson, Senior Vice President of Bioinformatics, Ardais

Ardais deployed the Agile Software Development Framework. Test automation was paramount to the above improvement.

The author is not advocating one development method over another. The various agile development methods will be reviewed briefly to explain the importance of an automated test strategy to achieving this level of improvement.

Agile software development is a conceptual framework for undertaking software engineering projects. There are a number of agile software development methods, such as those espoused by The Agile Alliance. Most agile methods attempt to minimize risk by developing software in short timeboxes, called iterations, which typically last one to four weeks. Each iteration is like a miniature software project of its own, and includes all of the tasks necessary to release the mini-increment of new functionality: planning, requirements analysis, design, coding, testing, and documentation. While an iteration may not add enough functionality to warrant releasing the product, an agile software project intends to be capable of releasing new software at the end of every iteration. At the end of each iteration, the team reevaluates project priorities. (Reference: Wikipedia)

Automated Testing is a Pre-Requisite to Effective Agile Software Development and Productivity Improvements.

In order to successfully develop software in short iterations, the ability to quickly test the builds and provide rapid feedback is a basic requirement. With this in place, you are on the road to measurable improvements in development team productivity.

In the next issue we will discuss Critical Reason Number 5.

By: Clayton Blaylock, Senior Vice President of qaSignature
Please e-mail your comments to cblaylock@qasignature.com or call me directly @ (617) 510-6545.

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