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

Critical Issue Number 5: Reduce Manual Testing

Convert Your QA Team From the Bottleneck to the Champions

How long is your testing cycle? If it's more than a day, you may have room for improvement. If it takes several weeks, you have an opportunity for large savings. Remember, in a manual test environment, the test must be repeated manually for every iteration of the test cycle. The longer the test cycle, the bigger the potential bottleneck. No matter how inexpensive the resources, there is an incremental cost that is repeated each and every time a manual test is performed.

If you read the previous newsletters, you already know many of the benefits of automation to include reduced time to market, increased development productivity, improved quality and lower costs. Some of you already have sophisticated automation solutions in place. The challenge for the rest of you is to get started. But where do you start when it comes to reducing manual test time?

During crunch time, quality is often compromised because of the lack of time to complete the test. Most quality assurance professionals agree: There is never enough time to complete the test, so you need to prioritize the testing: Here are 2 important factors to consider.

  1. Risk
  2. Time to complete the test

Risk refers to the impact a defect will have in the field. Time to complete the test is relevant because this impacts the size of the bottleneck having a direct impact on Time to Market.

Start by automating the "critical path" or the main highway through the product and prioritize by measuring the Risk and Time. Automate the redundant tests first and give a higher priority to the long test time items because when time deadlines approach, these tests are more likely to be cut short.

As the automation coverage is expanded the QA professional's time is freed up to concentrate on writing test scripts and testing new functionality in the product.

"Since we started working with qaSignature, our QA team is able to focus on testing new features and we're comfortable that when something breaks qaSignature will catch it."
Dexter Sealy, Senior VP of Research and Development, CardScan

In an automated test environment, once the test is written, the computer performs the testing and the manual test requirement is eliminated. The test can be run as frequently as necessary with no added cost. The QA professionals become the Champions of the test process by eliminating the bottleneck.

In the next issue we will discuss Critical Reason Number 6.

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

Click on this link for the CardScan Case Study
Click here for a PDF copy of the complete white paper

Special Offer: $1,000 off the Proof of Concept Service

Offer good through October, 2007.

To Companies Who Want To Build QA Automation - But Can't Get Started. Take qaSignature For A Test Drive.

We're so confident we can do what we say, we'll give you an opportunity to "take us for a test drive" with our low risk offer: QA Diagnostic and Proof Of Concept Test Drive Program. It's a great way to validate our process. Here's what our clients had to say.

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"The proof of concept demonstrated the applicability of applying the qaSignature QA Automation Methodology to our Agile Development Process."
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Call us now @ 617 510-6545

Click on the link below for details:

Proof of Concept

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