Our recent survey shows that technology fragmentation is the biggest software testing issue in banking today. Based on this survey, a typical application will require an average of 200 test scripts to be created and run for each release. Even if you choose to test 30-40 of the most often transactions or device combinations, the time taken to manually test a typical release can be more than 500 tester days. Subsequent releases typically add 10% more functionality, but in a manual testing environment these have to be fully tested again. This increases the time required to test each new release to 550 tester days. The survey shows that testing combinations will increase and the testing effort for the typical application will exceed the 1000 days, and you cannot keep hiring more people to consume the impact of this fragmentation. Testing the different browsers and variant devices manually presents a huge testing challenge. Maintaining a manual testing approach means having to adopt one or more of the following unattractive options:

• Pay for more manual testers, which has a significant cost implication
• Increase time-to-market, which has a significant impact on competitiveness
• Test less which means more errors in the software and customer satisfaction.

Vaios Vaitsis, Founder & CEO at Validata Group commented, “In the past, companies were only testing very few transactions and a small number of combinations, which was taking much less testing effort and time for each release. The benefit of automated vs manual testing approach is that automation offers reusability and justification of the testing assets without the requirement of a big team to support it” Automation is key. The picture with automation is entirely different and allows an organisation, for the same project to increase coverage, improve quality and faster time-to-market and all at cost levels that are attractive when compared to manual testing. The increased need for automation supports a more ‘continuous’ approach to software quality and testing. The traditional model where the focus was to test at the end once development was complete is gone, unless you want delays and rework in the projects. Continuous automated testing is the critical process within the software development phase to deliver applications faster.