Software, either in the form of a web based service or a mobile based application, has become immensely popular and universal. Consequently, a poor quality software or application can lead to customer dissatisfaction, loss of revenue and brand equity, increase in litigation costs, and numerous other fallouts where customers use the software to carry out crucial tasks like banking.
As an antidote to
such eventualities, businesses are fine tuning their testing processes by adopting
Test Automation. This is because by establishing a Test Automation Framework an
enterprise can leverage many benefits in the form of identification of hidden errors,
reusability of test suite, quicker test and release phases, better deployment
of human resources, better quality software, increased customer satisfaction,
and a rise in profits.
In the digital era,
where trillion lines of codes are written to develop a software - ranging from
office suites, engineering automated tools, and mobile gaming to the high end domains
of military hardware and space technology, the issue of Quality Assurance
cannot be over emphasized.
Poor quality
software with glitches can be absolutely damaging for a company’s reputation
and a customers’ loss of confidence in the product. The situation has arisen as
companies tend to cut costs on quality control in order to become the early
bird in the market.
Impact of poor quality software
·
Cost
of correction: When poor
quality software triggers increased customer complaints, a large chunk of
employees are forced to spend their productive time in addressing those issues rather
than focusing on doing something new. Hence, it makes sense to perform quality
control activities on applications before they are delivered to the customers.
·
Effect
on brand value: Dissatisfied
customers can spread the news of a bad quality product real fast, more than
what the PR or marketing team of a company can do. Customer distrust can have a
lasting impact on the revenue stream and brand equity of a company, as
customers will not think twice before moving to a rival product.
·
Litigation
costs: Affected
customers can sue a company if its product(s) impacts their lives in a negative
way. Moreover, should a product fall foul of regulatory compliance requirements
the consequences can be real damaging.
As business
stakeholders realize the scale of damage poor quality software can bring upon
the company, quality control is made central to the overall scheme. Besides, in
order to ensure the delivery of better quality software in real quick time, the
use of Agile or DevOps gains traction. This brings into focus Software Test
Automation wherein quality issues on account of manual testing are
addressed.
Five key benefits of Test Automation
1.
Saving
time and money: Automated
Application Testing can drastically cut down time and resources that are
typically spent on manual testing. Besides, since innumerable test iterations
can be carried out practically unattended, the concerned manpower can be
deployed on other focus areas.
