Understanding the Testing Process

The introduction of automated testing into the business environment involves far more than buying and installing an automated testing tool. In fact, effective automation is predicated on the idea that a manual testing process already exists since there is not a technology in existence today that performs automatic testing. So it is recommended that testing organizations begin their testing projects with a structured approach. Within the testing environment, a quality assurance process is defined as a set of related steps designed to ensure or verify that a software application meets the requirements of the business user. Before attempting to automate a test, a solid grasp of basic testing processes is needed, as is an understanding of what automated testing can accomplish, and an idea of which tests are good candidates for automation. In fact, not all tests should, or can be, automated. When considering which tests to automate, focus should be placed on those manual test activities which take the longest time to set up including those manual tests that require the highest number of repetitive tasks and which are run the most frequently. Automated testing should be used to augment current testing methods, and the process of planning for automated testing should be an extension of the current test planning process.