Automated Software Testing Speeds the Software Testing Process

	The software system developed should be free from errors and should not cause any malfunctioning of the system at the manufacturer’s site
	The software developed by any individual or organization is bound to have bugs which cannot be found at the programming stage.

Such errors can occur due to miscommunication or no communication, complexity of software, errors in programming, changing specifications, time pressures etc. Such errors can come out during testing and not on live use.

The software testing process ensures that the product is credible and the quality of software is high. The testing of software can either be done manually or by automated software testing.

The use of automated software for testing has been in vogue for the past few years but it is still relatively new. Software testing goes through different phases such as unit testing, integration testing, system testing, system integration testing, alpha and beta testing etc. from the beginning of the development of the software right to the time it is marketed. It is true that the automated software testing appears more expensive than manual testing; however the speed of testing and time saved as compared to manual testing more than offset this loss thereby making this process cost effective.

During the software testing, the complete evaluation of the software for its functions and performance are carried out. The evaluation is done on parameters such as overall capability, efficiency, portability, maintainability, easy usability and user friendliness. Many times the testing of the above parameters is done in a modular way. In such a situation the working of the software tested for one or more of these parameters may be satisfactory; but when an additional function is added the software fails indicating a bug in this area. This sort of testing requires frequent iterative testing which if done manually is time consuming and also requires more people to work on it.

Use of software testing software for automated software testing gives quick results and consumes very little time to retest the areas that were tested earlier. The whole operation including resetting of the testing tool and testing is done in a matter of minutes. Overall there will be considerable time saving in using automated software and also the results come quickly. Many automated software testing tools have the facilities to record the different actions of the software which can be stored and replayed for debugging and rectification.

Some software technicians believe that it is preferable to use manual testing under certain circumstances because of their reliability. The main drawback in this is that this is time consuming and not cost effective. Any software contains millions of code lines and the problem could occur due to error in any of these lines. Using automated software checking tool one can zero down to the exact location where the problem has occurred and solve it. Further you can also do partial testing by segmenting the software.

One of the major advantages of automated software testing is that they have many testing tools and one can use this to break down the tests for working on specific areas of the software. Although automated testing is more expensive as compared to manual, it has been found in practice that automated tests take a lot less time. You should remember that the automated testing is only a supplementary to manual testing and does not replace manual testing.