When is the right time to start QA Automation?

QA Automation is the logical next step after Manual QA is in place. However, the non-logical decision is when to start with the implementation of an automatic QA process.

This article is intended for companies that have a product that is currently tested manually and want to explore QA Automation outsourcing of tests compelled to lower long-term costs, improve quality and accelerate delivery times.

In our experience, the right time to adopt QA Automation on the Agile Software Development process is in most cases once you have finished your MVP, by not doing it, your product could lack quality and lag in time-to-market for new features.

So, take your time for an informed decision. By answering when what you will be solving and how to start, you are covering the basics of automation as everyday practice:

When to do it

1. Existing applications are stable and do not change frequently. The idea is not to rewrite the test cases constantly.
2. Whatever you are doing manually in QA today is highly repeatable.
3. The test cases will be useful for a long period of time, for instance: core business applications.
4. Your Manual QA practice is fully implemented and your team is experiencing one of the previous scenarios.

What are you covering when you are doing QA Automation?

• Regression Testing: For re-testing pre-existing application functions that
  are being carried forward to new versions.
• Smoke Testing: Forgetting a quick high-level assessment of the
  quality of a build and make go / no-go decision on deeper testing.
• Data-Driven Testing: For testing application functions that need to be validated with lots of different inputs & large data sets.
• Load & Performance Testing: No viable manual alternative exists.

How can you start?

Count on your manual QA team. It has to adopt the QA Automation specialist as a part of the team for doing this cycle every sprint:

• Input phase: QA Automation specialists receive the matrixes and test cases from QA manual specialists.
• Consolidation phase: Test cases candidates for automation are filtered from all the cases in order to: Code the test cases and build testing workflows. In the long run, look-and-feel testing remains manual and core functions are automated tested.
• Results presentation: Structured in a live demo of the automated tests at the early stages of the project and in later sprints as an inventory report of bugs caught by using the technology.
• Code review: Same as development code reviews, reviews of test automation assets is needed to improve throughput. The second step after test automation is to adopt the Page-Object-Model for providing legibility, ease of maintenance and abstraction in libraries to your projects.

Do you want to start QA Automation?

Contact us. We do QA Automation using all relevant technologies like Selenium, Java and Javascript frameworks with the practice of the Page-Object-Model to test a wide range of development technologies: APIs, Webs and Mobile iOS/Android, Java, AngularJS, Node.js, Vue.js, React, Javascript, React Native, Bootstrap, Wordpress, Drupal, WooCommerce, Magento, and HTML5 and CSS3.