Reducing Test Automation Maintenance Costs

摘要

Many organizations attempt to implement test automation, but end up with shelfware instead of testware. This can represent a substantial loss in costs associated with tool evaluation, licenses, and training. Additionally, this can adversely impact team productivity & morale, which creates a lost opportunity to improve the effectiveness of the testing process. Testers can spend many hours creating automated tests only to find the same scripts take much more time to maintain and enhance. There are many reasons why the maintenance cost of automation tests are high. As maintenance activities climb, the focus and creativity of the testers quickly turns to software maintenance instead of their real job... testing the application. Project deadlines approach, the testing schedule falls further behind, and the decision is made to cut your losses and proceed manually. Management deems the automation effort a failure and the automated tests & tool are relegated to shelfware. Why did the test automation process fail? What is the real problem?