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Test automation is now a key part of successful software development, helping companies release better products more quickly. While manual testers still play a crucial role, automation testing offers faster results, increased test coverage, and savings in manual test execution time. The number of automated test cases directly influences the time required for regression cycles and ultimately improves the time to market for a product. Setting up automation costs money at the start, so it’s important to calculate the Return on Investment (ROI) to check if the benefits are worth the expense. Integrating test automation reporting tools like ReportPortal can improve ROI by streamlining test failure analysis and providing deeper analytics.
What is the ROI of test automation?
ROI is a way to measure how much you gain compared to what you spend. For test automation, it shows the value automation adds to your testing process. Calculating ROI is important because:
Highlights cost savings: demonstrates how much time or money automation saves compared to manual testing.
Supports automation decisions: provides clear data to convince managers or investors.
Facilitates planning: offers insight into when returns can be expected, making budget and resource allocation more effective.
By automating tests, businesses can test faster, reduce manual work, and improve the quality of their products. Automation of manual test cases allows teams to focus on complex scenarios while repetitive tasks are handled by automated test scripts, improving product quality and efficiency. ROI helps ensure that your automation efforts are worth the investment.
ReportPortal can further improve ROI by automating result analysis, enabling quicker decision-making, and reducing manual effort in tracking and managing test results.
How to calculate the ROI of test automation
Figuring out ROI is a straightforward way to show automation’s value. The basic formula is:
ROI = (Benefits – Costs) / Costs * 100%
Here’s how it works:
Benefits from test automation can include:
Saving money: automating tests means paying less for manual work.
Saving time: repeating the same tests takes much less time with automation.
Finding bugs earlier: fixing problems sooner means fewer expensive fixes later.
Quicker time-to-market: automation allows for more testing, so you can release updates faster.
Costs include:
Initial setup: buying tools and setting up your automation system.
Development time: writing and setting up test scripts.
Maintenance: keeping your tests updated as your software changes.
Efforts on test results analysis: time and resources used to analyze test failures and generate reports.
For example, if automating tests saves you $50,000 a year but costs $30,000 to set up and maintain, the ROI is:
ROI = (50,000 – 30,000) / 30,000 * 100% = 66.7%
This demonstrates how effective automation can be in reducing costs and improving the time required for testing cycles. With ReportPortal, you can further increase these savings by automating result analysis and reducing the overhead of manual test report creation.
Common mistakes that impact ROI in test automation
To get the most out of test automation, avoid these common mistakes:
1. Automating the wrong tests
Some tests don’t need automation. Automating rarely used or overly complicated tests can waste money and time.
2. Skipping maintenance
Automated tests need regular updates to work with changes in the software. Ignoring this can lead to broken tests and unreliable results.
3. Focusing only on costs
Trying to cut costs too much can backfire. Instead, focus on the return on investment ROI in the long term, considering benefits like better product quality and faster releases.
4. Not tracking results
To evaluate the value of test automation, it's essential to measure metrics both before and after implementing it. This helps you clearly see the impact and identify areas of improvement.
Start by assessing your test coverage — both manual and automated — before automation. Then, measure your automation rate, which ideally should reach around 80% of your test cases.
After implementing test automation, focus on metrics like the time saved in regression testing. For example, if regression used to take a week, automation could reduce it to just four days.
Another key factor in improving ROI is the significant reduction in test result analysis time. With ReportPortal’s real-time reporting capabilities, teams can start investigating the first failures the moment they appear, rather than waiting for the entire regression suite to complete. This approach shortens the feedback loop considerably, allowing you to address issues more efficiently.
Beyond real-time insights, ReportPortal’s automated analysis — powered by Machine Learning — further accelerates the process. Over time, the system learns from the team’s prior investigations, enabling it to automatically classify and prioritize new failures. This means engineers can concentrate on genuinely new or critical issues, while known or recurring problems are automatically flagged and categorized. Additionally, the bulk analysis feature helps streamline this workflow by grouping similar failures together, so teams can resolve multiple instances of the same root cause in a single action rather than reviewing each occurrence individually.
Additionally, with ReportPortal’s widget-driven dashboards, you can design a reporting layout that continually refreshes as new results are posted. Instead of repeatedly generating manual test reports and summaries, you establish a set of key metrics and visualizations upfront. From that point forward, the dashboard updates in real time, ensuring that everyone has instant access to the most current testing insights without any extra overhead.
Lastly, measure your code coverage, where Drill4J will be a great help to you. It provides metrics backed by hard data and instant feedback on testing progress. Drill4J is integrated across multitude of environments and testing stages, including unit, API, E2E, and manual tests.
A unique feature of Drill4J is its ability to aggregate data from multiple application versions, enabling the incorporation of weeks of testing metrics into a cohesive and actionable report.
Drill4J supports short-term analyses for cases like branch merging and pre-release testing with “New or Changed Methods” coverage feature as well as detailed all-encompassing report for long-term test development planning.
Test automation offers numerous benefits, but it requires good planning and management. By calculating ROI, you can ensure that automation is a smart investment. Avoiding common mistakes and focusing on clear goals will help you get the most value from automation. By the way, ReportPortal boosts ROI by cutting down manual work, providing useful insights and supporting continuous improvements.