Test automation is often presented as a way to reduce testing costs, increase assurance, and reduce the testing cycles required for an ongoing project. Goals that some projects/companies don’t always achieve. In this article, we will talk about test automation outsourcing, as well as other solutions and their costs.
Outsourcing automated tests
As in the context of IT development, outsourcing can be profitable. Coastal solutions can be found in the quality assurance outsourcing market, with armadas of testers performing tests manually but presented as “automated,” sometimes managed by service centers located on the other side of the world.
The optimal choice would be to work with an outsourcing qa company where you have previously established a climate of trust by implementing a prototype for a sufficiently long period.
With outsourcing, it’s not just the tools that take priority, but even more the way you communicate, the responsiveness, the expertise of the automation specialists responsible for your project, and the results you get
Automating testing with an open-source tool
This is almost always the model teams start with. Since development teams are primarily composed of computer scientists, their first approach is to imagine that setting up a test automation project is much easier than developing software. So we take a free, open-source tool with the goal of doing everything from A to Z: from test legacy to execution.
For project costing, this is quick: it’s free! However, practicing this way not only takes you away from your original job: producing software that meets expressed needs, but also exposes you to a significant waste of time and money.
Under the motivating impulse of a few well-meaning insiders, a new project was just born: creating a test automation platform. Starting with a “free” but basic tool, then we need to dress it up, make it simple, practical, intuitive, and fast.
Automated testing software for test management
Another well-known solution for test automation is to buy or rent software to deploy an automated testing process.
Of course, you need to adapt this software to your context according to the number of automation professionals who will be using the platform as well as the timing of the test. Fees are negotiable depending on the volume and duration of the subscription.
At this stage, we can already compare this model with the previous solution, which requires the implementation of the platform. Implementing this type of project requires providing the necessary infrastructure to run the tests. This implies additional costs: the cost of purchasing or leasing equipment, the costs needed to maintain the operational state; both the test legacy and the infrastructure needed to run them.
So we can conclude that successful outsourcing has a huge advantage: sustainability. Indeed, if you use an open source tool or purchase a license, the automation project very often becomes obsolete, even if it manages to work.
Too much turnover will result in no one maintaining not only the test legacy, the hardware infrastructure, but also, in the case of an open source tool, the developed test automation platform.