Test Automation Feasibility Study: How to Conduct

Hari Mahesh

Modern software development processes increasingly rely on test automation as a critical component. It promises faster release cycles, higher quality, and productivity with fewer manual test efforts. It is not always as easy, and there are simple solutions to automate tests for all kinds of functional flow. When investing in automation tools, frameworks, and resources, it is crucial to know if your project or application can be automated. A Test Automation Feasibility Study allows you to evaluate if automation is the way forward. It provides some understanding of costs, technical fitment, and skill-set requirements, as well as a tentative measure for ROI.

As a result, stakeholders may use this in-depth feasibility study to comprehend if test automation would provide the expected results. This process measures a team’s technical, financial, and organizational maturity to identify upfront whether automation can be done easily or not.

This article will discuss key steps in performing a deep test automation feasibility analysis that allows you to drive strategic decisions.

What is a Test Automation Feasibility Study?

A Test Automation Feasibility Study is an investigative process that examines the viability of automating tests for a particular software application, module, or system. This study looks at factors like the complexity of the application under test (AUT), test coverage goals, available automation tools, cost implications, team expertise, and potential ROI. The goal of the feasibility study is to ensure that automation if implemented, will bring tangible benefits to the organization.

The study typically seeks to answer the following key questions:

• Is the application or system suitable for test automation?
• What test cases can and should be automated?
• What will be the costs associated with automation, including tools, infrastructure, and training?
• How will automation impact testing timelines and software quality?
• Does the team have the necessary expertise and skill set to carry out and maintain automation?
• Will the automation efforts lead to a positive ROI?

Importance of a Test Automation Feasibility Study

Before diving into test automation, it is crucial to understand the potential challenges and limitations. A feasibility study helps in:

Assess Risks

Automation is not always appropriate for every test case or system. A feasibility study helps in identifying the risks of automating tests, including technical challenges, tool limitations and potential maintenance overheads.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

Test automation tools, infrastructure and skilled resources come at a cost. A feasibility study will outline the expected costs and weigh them against the potential benefits. Read: What is Cost of Quality?

Resource Planning

It’s important to assess whether your current team has the required skills to design, implement, and maintain automated tests. This study will highlight any skill gaps and help plan for necessary training or hiring.

Align with Organizational Goals

Automation should support your business goals, such as improving time to market, reducing manual testing efforts, and increasing test coverage. A feasibility study ensures that the proposed automation strategy aligns with these objectives.

Without a feasibility study, automation projects risk running into unforeseen challenges, leading to wasted resources and time. Therefore, it’s crucial to invest time in this planning phase to ensure automation’s success.

Steps of Test Automation Feasibility Study

To determine the feasibility of test automation, several steps must be followed systematically. They will allow you to assess the technical, financial and operational readiness for automation.

Step 1: Define Objectives and Scope

The first step in any feasibility study is to clearly define the scope and objectives of the automation project. This involves setting out what you hope to achieve through automation and identifying the areas of the application or system that are in scope for automation.

• Understanding the Business and Testing Needs:
  • What are the business goals for implementing automation? For example, faster releases, higher test coverage or improved product quality.
  • Understand the specific testing challenges your team faces. For instance, is the testing process too slow, too costly or too prone to human error?
• Define Automation Goals and Objectives:
  • Set clear, measurable objectives. For example, reducing regression testing time by 50%, increasing test coverage to 80% or ensuring zero defects escape into production.
• Identify the Scope of Automation:
  • Identify the specific areas, modules or features of the application that are most critical and suitable for automation. Typically, regression tests, smoke tests, and performance tests are the best candidates for automation.
  • Define which tests will remain manual, as not all test cases are ideal for automation. Exploratory testing and highly complex, one-off test scenarios are often better suited for manual execution. Read: How to Automate Exploratory Testing with AI in testRigor.
• Establish Success Criteria:
  • Clearly define what success looks like. Examples include measurable improvements in testing speed, accuracy, and frequency. Additionally, define criteria such as the reduction of manual testing hours or the ability to support continuous integration and continuous testing.

Step 2: Evaluate Application Suitability for Automation

The next step is to assess the technical characteristics of the application under test (AUT). Not all applications are suited for automation, and understanding the technical challenges early can save time and resources.

• Technology and Architecture:
  • Evaluate the application’s architecture and technology stack. Web applications, mobile applications, desktop applications, and APIs all have different requirements and constraints for automation.
  • Determine whether the application has stable interfaces (such as UI elements and APIs) that can be automated. Applications that change frequently or have highly dynamic UIs might require more effort to automate, and maintenance will be high.
• System Stability:
  • Assess the stability of the system or application. If the application is in its early stages of development and constantly evolving, the automation effort may be wasted, as the automated tests will need to be frequently updated.
  • Highly stable systems with fewer changes between builds are ideal for automation.
• Test Environment:
  • Check if the necessary test environments are available to run automated tests. This includes ensuring that the test environments can be replicated, that test data can be reset after test runs and that network conditions can be simulated if needed. Read: Managing Your Test Environment: What You Need to Know.
• Data-Driven Testing:
  • Consider if your tests will benefit from data-driven approaches, where test inputs can be sourced from external data sources such as databases, files or spreadsheets.

Step 3: Assess the Testing Types and Test Cases to Automate

Not all types of testing are suitable for automation. It’s essential to identify the areas where automation can offer the most value and which test cases are best suited for automation.

• Identify Suitable Test Types for Automation:
  • Regression Testing: Automated regression tests ensure that new changes do not break existing functionality.
  • Smoke and Sanity Testing: These tests verify the basic functionality of the system and are typically quick to execute. Automating smoke tests ensures that they can be run frequently.
  • Performance Testing: Automated performance tests can simulate multiple users and workloads to assess the performance of the system under various conditions.
  • Data-Driven Testing: Tests that require the same steps with different data inputs are good candidates for automation.
• Test Case Prioritization:
  • Prioritize test cases that are repetitive, time-consuming, and business-critical. For example, tests that need to be run after every build or test cases that are frequently executed during regression cycles.
  • Avoid automating highly complex or rare test cases, as the effort to automate these tests may not be justified by the potential benefits.

Step 4: Evaluate Automation Tools

Choosing the right automation tools is critical to the success of test automation. This involves evaluating whether the tools you select can meet your application’s technical requirements and your team’s skill set.

• Tool Selection Criteria:
  • Technology Compatibility: Ensure that the tool supports the application’s platform, including web, mobile, API, etc. Keeping different tools for each automation is time-consuming and also the maintenance effort is higher. For any change in functionality, the user needs to update all frameworks. It’s always advisable to select tools like testRigor, which support different types of testing such as Web and Mobile browser testing, Mobile testing, Desktop app testing, API testing, Visual testing, Accessibility testing, and many more.
  • Cross-Browser and Cross-Platform Support: For web and mobile applications, ensure the tool supports multiple browsers and platforms. testRigor helps you to execute the tests in different browsers, including mobile and desktop web browsers in parallel. Not just that alone, you can choose different flavors of operating systems for each browser. So, on roughly around 3000+ combinations, you can execute the tests. 
  • Ease of Use: The tool should be easy to use and require little maintenance. Using traditional automation tools like Selenium, the testing team needs to put more effort into creating the scripts, and the maintenance effort is huge. Debugging the code takes too much time. testRigor helps create test scripts in plain English, thanks to the NLP enablement. This helps any non-technical project member contribute by adding or updating the test scenarios. Also, this reduces the maintenance time very much.
  • Integration with third-party tools: As we know, the current market trend is early to market. To achieve that, the QA team should be on par with development. So, the team should not get stuck with integration scripts and version mismatches between the framework and other third-party tools. testRigor comes with built-in integration with all the leading bug management tools, project management tools, CI/CD tools, and infra management tools. 
  • Reporting Capabilities: The tool should provide detailed and customizable reports, which are crucial for identifying issues quickly.

Step 5: Skillset and Resource Assessment

Test automation requires specialized skills and knowledge. Before proceeding, it’s essential to assess whether your team has the expertise needed to design, implement, and maintain automation.

• Team Skill Assessment:
  • Evaluate your team’s current technical skills. Do they have the programming skills necessary for writing and maintaining automated test scripts? Are they familiar with the selected automation tool?
• Training and Development Needs:
  • Identify any skill gaps and assess the training needs. Determine if training can be provided in-house or if external training is necessary. For example, team members may need to learn new programming languages, scripting techniques or tool usage.
• Hiring Requirements:
  • If the current team lacks the skills needed for automation, consider hiring additional automation engineers or consultants to help with the initial setup and knowledge transfer.
• Ongoing Maintenance and Support:
  • Automated tests require regular maintenance, especially as the application evolves. Ensure that the team is prepared for the ongoing effort of maintaining the test automation suite.

Step 6: Cost Analysis and Return on Investment (ROI)

One of the most critical aspects of the feasibility study is determining the costs associated with test automation and calculating the potential return on investment.

• Initial Costs:
  • Tool Costs: If you choose commercial automation tools, factor in the licensing and subscription costs. Read: How to Save Budget on QA.
  • Infrastructure Costs: Additional hardware, servers or cloud services may be needed to support automation.
  • Training and Onboarding Costs: Include the cost of training your team to use the automation tools and frameworks effectively.
• Ongoing Costs:
  • Maintenance: Automation scripts require regular updates to keep up with changes in the application. Estimate the ongoing costs of maintaining these scripts.
  • Support: Factor in any support costs associated with using commercial tools.
• Return on Investment (ROI):
  • Calculate the potential ROI by comparing the costs of automation with the expected benefits, such as reduced manual testing time, faster release cycles, and improved test coverage. Read: How to Get The Best ROI in Test Automation.
  • Consider the potential cost savings from catching bugs earlier in the development process, reducing the risk of defects reaching production. Read: Minimizing Risks: The Impact of Late Bug Detection.

Step 7: Risk Assessment and Mitigation Strategies

Every automation project carries risks, and it’s important to identify and plan for them during the feasibility study.

• Potential Risks:
  • Flaky Tests: Automated tests that fail intermittently can reduce confidence in the automation suite. This often happens due to environmental issues, timing problems, or test dependencies.
  • Maintenance Overhead: Automated tests need to be updated as the application evolves. If not properly managed, this can become a significant overhead.
  • Tool Limitations: Some tools may not support all features of your application, leading to incomplete test coverage.
  • Initial Setup Time: Setting up the automation framework and writing the initial scripts can be time-consuming.
• Risk Mitigation Strategies:
  • Regular Maintenance Cycles: Plan for regular reviews and updates of the automated tests to ensure they stay relevant.
  • Use Stable Test Data: Ensure that your automated tests use stable and reliable test data to reduce the likelihood of flaky tests.
  • Pilot Project: Start with a pilot project to validate the tool and approach before scaling automation across the entire application.

Step 8: Prepare a Detailed Feasibility Study Report

Once the feasibility study is complete, the next step is to compile the findings into a detailed report. This report should be presented to stakeholders for review and decision-making.

• Executive Summary:
  • Provide a high-level overview of the study, including objectives, findings and recommendations. Keep this section concise, focusing on the overall feasibility and ROI.
• Technical Feasibility:
  • Summarize the technical suitability of the application for automation, including tool compatibility, system stability and test environment readiness.
• Test Case Selection:
  • Highlight which test cases and test types are suitable for automation and explain why certain tests should remain manual.
• Cost-Benefit Analysis:
  • Present a detailed breakdown of the costs associated with automation (tools, infrastructure, training, maintenance) and compare them to the expected benefits.
• Risks and Mitigation:
  • Identify potential risks and explain the strategies you will use to mitigate them.
• Recommendations:
  • Based on the findings, provide a clear recommendation on whether to proceed with test automation. If automation is deemed feasible, outline the next steps for implementation.

Step 9: Make a Decision

The final step in the feasibility study process is to make a decision based on the report’s findings. Stakeholders should use the information to determine whether to proceed with automation or if further preparatory steps are needed, such as training or additional tool evaluation.

If the decision is made to proceed with automation, the feasibility study report can also serve as a roadmap for implementation.

Conclusion

Test Automation Feasibility Study is an essential step in determining whether test automation is a viable and beneficial solution for your project. By systematically evaluating automation’s technical, financial, and operational aspects, you can make informed decisions that align with your business goals. The feasibility study helps identify the right tools, test cases, and resources needed to ensure the success of the automation initiative while avoiding costly pitfalls. Following the steps outlined in this guide will help ensure that your automation efforts lead to a positive return on investment and a more efficient, reliable testing process.

“We spent so much time on maintenance when using Selenium, and we spend nearly zero time with maintenance using testRigor.”

Keith Powe VP Of Engineering - IDT