Is it true that Automation;

1. is really expensive, with small  Return On Investment?
2. is expensive to maintain?
3. is directed only for people with technical skills?
4. cannot support/perform end to end testing?
5. cannot cover the business needs to their full extend?
6. is not  flexible and/or easy to handle on an on stand changing project?

All the above myths are a reflection of the many reasons, like  mistakes/midjudges on the  initiation of the process, wrong automation tools selection and most probably wrong methodology/approach followed ,that trigger an endless effort without significant results. The truth is that there is no actual fault of the Automation itself. Most of the times the Testing streams state that "we did not have time to do it properly",  but on the other hand we do  have time to do it wrong again and again? Reproducing an approach, which is proven wrong, again and again, logically makes Automation look expensive or expensive to maintain as the process becomes endless and without any physical results. Moreover there is a "storyboard" created, regarding automation not been able to cover end-to-end testing process or that is directed to IT people with technical skills only, and it does not reflect the business people and/or the business needs. In order to be more analytical we have to take the process from its beginning. What is the scope of each  project and the selection criteria of the automation tools? Projects can vary and they can involve many different types of testing. There are many different testing phases in order for the testing streams to be in a position to state that the Product(s) is/are validated and it/they function(s) as expected. Some of testing phases are listed below: Migration, Functional , SIT, UAT, Regression  and Performance testing. All of them are important pieces of this "Go Live puzzle" and they are linked by sequence, depending on each project’s nature. For most of these testing phases the involvement and leadership of business people is a "must", and those specific roles should be ahead of the testing process and also heavily involved in the automation. On the other hand IT streams have their own portion of responsibility throughout the process. The automation tool should be in a position to link the Business with the IT. The other edge of this conversation is the End-to-End testing and the business coverage for each organization/application. The questions raised here are:

1. Can automation help for the above testing phases providing the expected automation benefits such as, faster to market, Reduction of costs and proven ROI?
2. Can automation bridge the gap between Business and IT people  resulting in the reduction of expensive technical resources or the need of expensive coordinators?
3. Can it cover End-to-end business scenarios?

The answer for us is Yes. The automation tool selection should satisfy specific criteria in order to cover the needs of each project. The Automation tool should satisfy all the needed testing types with minimum effort and cost, especially comparing it with the equivalent cost of manual testing and all the risks incorporated there. The benefit of the automation VS the manual traditional testing approach is that automation can offer "reusability" and "justification" of the test assets and results upon demand without the requirement of a big team to support it. Validata SAS is a central suite for integrated tools, agnostic of any platform, database, UI and APIs, focused on managing core application lifecycle activities from requirements through testing and configuration management allowing banks to encourage best practices by capturing and reusing project assets and process knowledge. It is designed to validate the various configurations across the complete T24 software stack from Core to Country Model Bank, ISB and Local code. It enables end-to-end testing from front office applications with Desktop, Web and mobile user interfaces to backend processes and operations, and integrates with both Business and IT tools and repositories without taking customers to rigid platforms, and providing end-to-end traceability, dashboards and reporting. The product’s pre-built testing accelerators rapidly reduce lengthy testing cycles. When integrated with some applications, 75 per cent of the core test cases and test steps are available from the outset of the project, enabling testing of the project to get started instantly. Have you considered that  automation can offer you methodology and Knowledge,plus all the benefits of the Automation itself? TestCloud™ , powered by Validata SAS is a cloud-based managed testing service for T24; an important transition and a paradigm shift in testing solutions delivery. One that promises large gains and efficiency and flexibility, at a time when demands on project implementations are growing exponentially. It enables customers to move away from unstable environments, limited centralized governance and high costs of quality, and establish their own test environment in the cloud leveraging Validata SAS automated solution and pre-built Model Bank Testing Accelerators, providing wide coverage of all main banking functions and leveraging standard T24 Business Workflows and ready-to use-test data. That only can reduce test effort by a factor of as much as ten to one.