What is a Real Purpose of Automated Testing?

November 21 10:00 2014 by Nataliia Vasylyna Print This Article

It is a common knowledge that any mobile testing, desktop testing and web site testing are meant to find all the serious defects in the software product under test. Tester’s work is often evaluated by the number of defects he or she finds for an hour or working day.

So, all the activities during any software testing process are directed on fast detection as many defects as possible. Automation of test cases is considered to be one of the best methods to increase efficiency of software testing.

That means that the aim of automation is to make the whole process more effective. One should keep this in mind deciding what tests to automate.

Unfortunately, some testers overlook this specificity of automated testing and prepare automated tests believing that they will find software bugs.

Automated Tests Cannot Detect Errors Because They:

are just combinations of simple procedures;
do not have the intelligence to decide whether the detected issue is a defect, only humans can make such judgments;
are created to assist testers and perform routine, monotonous operations that take much time and efforts during manual testing.

Planning a testing process and determining what tests to automate one should remember the true purpose of automation and its role in software testing.