Functional testing is a key part of quality and ensures that the system or application works as the business expects.
It has always been a challenge to provide the business with the level of functional testing that is required while controlling the cost of actually doing the testing.
Traditionally there has been the following costs:
Purchase a number of expensive tools with high maintenance costs
Deploy a team of developers to do the script programming
Deploy a team of Subject Matter Experts to know what to test and when you have a failure
Build a separate framework in a third party tool (usually Excel) to let them work together.
Deploy ad hoc manual testers.
With these high up front costs there is an overriding desire to try and automate everything as a way of justifying this investment.
Not surprisingly, the results from trying to automate everything have been mixed, with a high number of automation efforts reverting back to manual testing when the full extent of the ongoing costs vs results becomes apparent.
So how do you get a positive ROI on your Functional testing ?
Reduce your up front license costs by picking a tool which doesn't cost £5k a license.
Pick a tool that can be used for both Automation and Manual Testing.
Remove the cost of Frameworks and expensive Programmer resources.
Select the correct mix of Automation and Manually testing. (see below).
The interactive diagram below shows how you can alter the Manual/Automated mix to minimize your testing costs.
The diagram above shows that as you increase your level of automation with ProcedureCapture you can reduce the manual testing personnel and save $45k per person. There is however a tipping point where the complexity of your automation is such that you need to change to a programming tool with programming resources and from this point on your costs escalate rather than decrease.
In summary, increase the slider until the point where automation becomes too dynamic to maintain without adding a new layer of framework/programming resource.
To see a full breakdown on the figures behind each position of the slider please read the cost case white paper here
ProcedureCapture is the only tool which does not need script programmers and allows you to use the same captured asset for both manual and automated testing.
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