What Is Automated Testing And Why It Is Required

Automated testing is a type of software testing where the testing would be performed automatically through an automation tool. It differs from manual testing, where testing is performed manually by human beings. More time is consuming on manual testing than automated testing.

Automated testing is most suitable for large projects that require going through the same steps repeatedly. We may use this type of testing to check whether the new functionality has not changed the behavior of the existing code. Manually repeating the test cases may increase the time and cost of the testing process. Here the test cases can be repeated without requiring any additional and time and cost.

Automation tools used in Automated testing will enter test data into the software system, compare the expected and actual results, and records the detailed test report automatically. We can implement automated software testing on almost all testing types. Different types of software testing can be performed with automated testing, which is given below

Functional Testing
Regression Testing
Smoke Testing
Unit Testing
Black Box Testing
Keyword Testing
Data Driven Testing
Integration Testing

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Why Automated Testing is Required?

Automatic testing is mostly required for large software projects that need to perform repeated testing going deep into the application. Automated testing will increase the effectiveness, efficiency, and coverage of the software that needs to test. Since this type of testing cannot fully replace manual testing, there is always manual testing that is absolutely essential. So we should know where we have to use automated testing and why it is required.

There are many benefits of using automated testing in place of manual testing when used for appropriate test cases. The test cases that need to be repeatedly executed, time-consuming, and which are difficult to perform manually are most suitable for this type of testing. It not only ensures the accuracy and consistency of software testing but also increases the speed of testing and increases the use of software resources. The following are the most popular benefits of using automated testing over manual testing.

1. Accuracy

Since manual testing will be done by a human tester there may be some mistakes such as skipping test steps due to the lengthy and maximum number of test steps for execution, incorrect recording of the test results, etc. Whereas automated testing takes tedium away from very long and repetitive tasks and records the test results correctly. So it assures more accuracy than manual testing while testing the software.

2. Consistency

Software testing done by automation tools is more consistent than the test performed by human testers on manual testing. Since all the inputs and circumstances are recorded in automated testing, a test can be reproduced accurately when the test case was failed. But in manual testing input data is not always recorded and exact circumstances are not known. So it is difficult to reproduce the bug in the case of failure of test cases.

3. Repeatability

We can repeat the test cases as required, with maintaining the accuracy for deeper diagnosis that may require for software developers. Whereas in manual testing human testers are unable to repeat the tests exactly in the same order every time.

4. Speed

It’s known that human testers are a bit slower than automation tools used in automated testing. Testers in manual testing cannot execute new and improved test cases with the same numbers of testers at the same time. But in automated testing, the test process can be completed without requiring any additional time even the test case has been changed.

5. Automaticity

Once the test case has been set up in automated testing, the testing process will run automatically without any human interaction. It will also record the test results automatically after completing the test. Whereas in manual testing, all the testing work such as test executing, recording, and storage should be done manually which can consume a longer time.

Although the benefits mentioned above there are some limitations in using automated testing. It is not suitable for ad hoc testing and automated scripts need a high level of maintenance required for testing highly dynamic applications. Some of the test cases which are newly created and not executed at least once manually are also not suitable for this type of testing.