By Tinah PETERS
With Africa moving towards a more digitally embedded society, the influence of software is far more considerable these days.
Software enhances business prospects and evolves an intelligent world. In addition to the industrial/commercial impact, software plays a critical role in all facets of life today. However, all it requires is the smooth and fail-proof functioning of the software.
Otherwise, the disastrous effects of software failures can have a crippling impact on the business and livelihood hence the benefits of software testing and quality assurance for any business cannot be over-emphasized.
The irrecoverable damages software failure can cause are evident from the startling reports worldwide. For example, in 2017, a statement released by Tricentis revealed that global enterprises have lost 1.7 trillion in assets and affected 3.7 million people across the globe.
According to a report by Synopsys Inc. in conjunction with the Consortium for Information & Software Quality (CISQ), the cost of poor software quality in the U.S. in 2020 was approximately $2.08 trillion.
In addition, the gory tales of enterprises affected by software glitches appear in the news almost daily worldwide. The IT snags that created substantial financial losses in different business sectors and organizations such as British Airways, Facebook (now Meta), and O2 network are good examples of the after-effects of software failure.
Therefore, companies should not just embrace testing, they should consider transitioning from manual to automated software testing which involves initial costs for tool acquisition, training, and implementation.
Let us examine the cost benefits of transiting from manual to automated software testing:
The long-term benefits often outweigh these expenses. Automated testing can enhance efficiency, reduce human errors, and expedite the testing process.
It leads to faster feedback cycles, enabling quicker releases and improving overall software quality. While the initial investment may be significant, the increased productivity and reduced long-term testing costs make automated testing a cost-effective and strategic choice for many organizations.
Efficiency: Automated testing significantly speeds up the testing process compared to manual testing, allowing quicker feedback on code changes.
Reusability: Automated tests can be reused across different releases and projects, saving time and effort in creating new test cases.
Accuracy: Automated tests eliminate the risk of human error in repetitive and tedious tasks, leading to more accurate and reliable test results.
Consistency: Automated testing ensures consistent execution of test cases, reducing variations in testing procedures that can occur with manual testing.
Regression Testing: Automated tests are ideal for conducting frequent regression tests, ensuring that new code changes don’t introduce unintended side effects or break existing functionality.
Parallel Execution: Automated tests can be run in parallel across various environments, enabling testing on multiple configurations simultaneously, which is challenging to achieve with manual testing.
Resource Savings: While there are initial costs for tool implementation and training, automated testing ultimately reduces the need for a large testing team, leading to cost savings in the long run.
Faster Time-to-Market: Quick and reliable automated tests enable faster releases, allowing software products to reach the market more rapidly.
Increased Test Coverage: Automated testing can execute a large number of complex test cases during every test cycle, providing higher test coverage than manual testing.
Early Bug Detection: Automated testing facilitates the early detection of bugs, allowing developers to address issues in the early stages of development when they are less costly to fix.
Data-Driven Testing: Automated tests can be designed to handle multiple sets of test data, enhancing test coverage and ensuring the software’s robustness under various conditions.
Improved Product Quality: By catching and fixing issues early in the development process, automated testing contributes to overall improvements in software quality.
In conclusion, transitioning from manual to automated software testing offers numerous advantages in terms of speed, reliability, efficiency, and overall cost-effectiveness.
About the writer:
TINAH PETERS holds a BSc degree in Business Information Systems graduate from the University of East London and a master’s degree in Project Planning and Management from the University of Bradford.
She started her expedition into the digital technology industry with Cyberspace Network Limited as part of the technical product support team that pioneered and contributed to the distribution of retail 4G LTE network in 2016. Her spark for product quality ignited which led her to join ALAT, Nigeria’s First Digital Bank.
During her time at ALAT, Tinah’s software testing career emerged as a Manual Software Tester and she contributed immensely to the QA processes through the creation of test plans and test cases, which also helped increase user experience. The success achieved with ALAT propelled her to up-skill by undertaking a certification, in both Manual Testing and Test Automation.
Tinah later joined Enlumi Data, a SaaS company that produces an array of solutions for businesses to drive quality efforts across the software development lifecycle. While working at Enlumi, the team created a platform called “Lumi Business” to empower SMEs with variant tools like Inventory Management, Loyalty Management, Business Analytics and a lot more to aid the growth of their business.
Over the course of her career, Tinah Peters has developed competencies in the use of Java language, automation tools like Selenium, Postman, K6, Testrail, and bug reporting tools like Jira, Notion, and Trello while driving product quality improvement using agile testing practices, {SDLC}.
She played an integral role in designing software testing frameworks and setting up QA standards and processes to drive product quality improvement.
Tinah presently works with Patricia Technologies Limited as a Software Test Engineer; where she collaborates with the software team to execute automation script and manual tests on Cryptocurrency applications. She plays a strategic role in the development of test plans, and test cases, maintaining QA standards and the review of PRD documents from the product team to ensure 100% test coverage before the deployment of applications to users.
Having been in this field of software testing, Tinah’s technical expertise and experience working with tech startups and strong leadership abilities have enabled her to contribute to the development of world-class products within the tech ecosystem in Nigeria and Africa.
