Making (Business) Sense of Test Automation

A presentation at Agile & Automation Days in in Gdańsk, Poland by Iancho Dimitrov

Test Automation is a great way to achieve agility and speed, to save time and reduce the amount of tedious tasks your QA team needs to handle. On the other hand, it is neither a silver bullet, nor it is applicable for every project. In order for it to be part of a project it must surely make business sense.

How do you evaluate and justify the introduction of Test Automation in your project – and keeping it in the long-term? How do you make sure it brings maximized benefits that are recognized by the project team, management and business stakeholders? What measurable goals and metrics can you set, track and share so you transparently show the return of investment in Test Automation? How to regularly present information about work done and results achieved in a way understandable by a broader audience? What prioritization approaches can help you achieve biggest impact? What can you do to keep ‘costs’ under control and not have maintenance efforts ‘explode’?

Join this session where I’ll share my thoughts and experience on these topics – and I’ll present examples, ideas and approaches that worked well for multi-year automated testing initiatives I have been responsible for.

Takeaways

  • Structuring your Test Automation initiative in a way that assures maximized benefits, recognized by the team, management and business stakeholders
  • Key success factors – and more importantly, most common pitfalls and reasons for Test Automation initiatives failure
  • Measurable goals and metrics for tracking and reporting to transparently show the return on investment in Test Automation.