How to Prepare for a Recession with Test Automation

To combat the effects of a recession, some business leaders may be inclined to scale back their digital transformation plans. However, this may not be the most effective approach. To achieve success, it is crucial to prioritize delivering an optimal customer experience. 

And to do so, streamlining testing processes is essential. Consumers today have high expectations for app performance and functionality, and settling for anything less can result in dissatisfaction. While economic uncertainty poses a significant challenge for many organizations, sacrificing software workflows is not a viable solution.

Automation is often seen as a "recession-proof" strategy that enables companies to simultaneously play offense and defense. In the short term, companies can become more efficient and save costs, while also building a crucial digital capability for the future. This is also true for test automation, which can optimize the overall testing process and produce high-quality digital products. Ultimately, these improvements can lead to a superior customer experience.

Learn more: Opkey's Test Automation Playbook

This blog post delves into the advantages of implementing test automation during an economic downturn to gain a competitive edge in the market. Additionally, we'll provide insights on how to initiate test automation.

What Is Test Automation

Test automation is a technique that involves the automatic execution of tests, managing test data, and using the outcomes to enhance the quality of software. To perform automated testing, specific testing software tools are used, which control test execution and compare the actual results with the expected outcomes to identify deviations. 

Learn more: How to Save Money with Test Automation

The practice of automation allows IT teams to concentrate on critical tasks and effectively manage frequent application changes due to employee demands, updates, and patching.

Test automation is an ideal approach for performing regression testing. The implementation of Agile and DevOps methodologies has led to an acceleration in software development. Manual testing can no longer keep up with this pace. Therefore, testing teams must invest in test automation to keep pace with the speed of development. 

Learn more: Why Test Automation is Critical to DevOps

Test automation greatly improves the speed and accuracy of test execution, and eliminates the laborious manual tasks associated with regression testing.  

• Increases productivity: Automated tests don’t require human interaction. As these tests can run repeatedly on their own, software developers, QAs, and business users can spend less time on testing and more time on critical tasks. Automated tests can run 24/7 since computers don’t require sleep or breaks.

• Mitigates risk: According to Gartner, the average cost of application downtime for enterprise apps like Oracle Cloud, Oracle EBS, SAP, and Salesforce is $5,600/minute. Automated testing helps ensure minimal application downtime, as all business critical processes can be tested in a time-efficient manner.

• Reduces costs: Contrary to what many think, test automation is more cost-effective than manual testing in the long term. Manual testing processes do not streamline repetitive tests. As time goes on, the cost of testing applications simply rises with the amount of labor needed to continue maintaining those tests. Automated testing is cheaper in the long run as automated test scripts once created can be reused endlessly at no additional cost.

Learn more: Manual vs. Automated Testing

• Accelerates innovation: According to Gitlab’s DevSecOps survey, testing was the biggest bottleneck in the software development lifecycle. Automation testing can address this bottleneck and empower developers to release better software, faster. This enables enterprises to be more agile and respond quicker to market changes.

How To Get Started With Test Automation

• Identifying what to automate; The process of test automation usually starts with identifying the requirements and use cases relevant to business. Here is a safe list of test types that can be automated without a doubt.

• Unit tests: To test the behavior of a single unit of an application, unit testing is conducted by separating it from the rest of the software. It doesn't rely on external APIs, databases, or any other external factors. The primary objective of unit testing is to observe the functioning of each component of an application independently. It is carried out during the development phase and is regarded as the initial level of testing.

• Integration tests: Integration testing is a type of software testing that aims to test the integration or interaction between different software modules or components to ensure that they work together correctly as a group. 

The main goal of integration testing is to identify any defects or issues that arise when multiple components are combined together, before the system is deployed to the production environment. It is performed at different stages of the software development life cycle, such as during the development phase or after the system has been built.

Learn more: The Complete Guide to System Integration Testing

• Smoke tests: It is used to check the basic functionality of an application or software after it has been built or updated. Smoke testing ensures that critical features of the application are working as expected before conducting more comprehensive testing. If an application passes the smoke test, it indicates that the software is ready for further testing.

• Regression tests: Regression testing is a quality assurance process that ensures a new change or update to an application does not adversely affect any existing functionality. The aim is to confirm that the changes made to the system have not caused any disruption or malfunction to features that were previously working correctly.

Learn more: A Comprehensive Guide to Regression Testing

• Assemble a team to take ownership of automation: In addition to selecting the appropriate use cases for automation, it's crucial to have a team with both technical and business expertise. Business users play a vital role in identifying critical business processes as they are most familiar with the day-to-day operations.

• Selecting the right tool: To mitigate business risks, it is essential to involve business users in testing. Therefore, organizations should consider implementing a no-code test automation platform. This platform requires a minimal learning curve, which enables business users to actively participate in testing.

Learn more: The Complete Guide to No-Code Test Automation

In addition to being no-code, your test automation platform should:

• Utilize artificial intelligence to automatically heal broken test scripts. This will largely reduce test maintenance efforts.

• Ensure optimal test coverage by recommending tests based on the highlighted risks.

Conclusion

Test automation can help enterprises prepare for a recession by reducing costs, increasing productivity, accelerating innovation, and mitigating risks.