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During the past 12 months, customers have been telling me the same thing: Their view of test automation has changed. It’s no longer about the percentage of tests that have been automated, but the results that they are seeking: speed and perfection. (Speed is how fast a solution can be fully tested and deployed; perfection is the ability to find and fix defects before they escape to customer domains.)
Perhaps more important is the value that these two qualities are bringing to the entire organization. For developers and testers, speed and perfection mean greater productivity, fewer headaches, and more time to focus on their “real jobs.” For executives at network equipment manufacturers and service providers, speed and perfection mean getting to the market ahead of competitors, reducing support costs (by delivering higher quality products), and retaining market share.
Customers seeking speed and perfection are finding that automated testing tools are a must-have for developers as well as testers. Many software developers once averse to testing have reported valuable time savings from using these tools. They now can test features and debug their code in a fraction of the time it would take to do manually. And by releasing higher quality code to QA, they spend less time debugging and interacting with QA/test groups. Instead they can create higher quality code faster, which is what developers prefer to do. Test engineers meanwhile have minimized the time spent writing scripts or automating tests, and can now focus on finding bugs. Some QA and test groups have experienced up to an eight-fold improvement in productivity.
More importantly, customers are finding that these gains have had an enormous business impact–from faster time to market to higher quality solutions. A leading telecom carrier, for instance, was able to reduce the time required to accept a software update (from an equipment vendor) from four months to nearly one month. And an equipment vendor substantially reduced defect escape rates. In both cases, these organizations reported that they were able to deliver high quality releases faster because developers and testers had adopted automated testing tools and processes.
I’ve also been hearing that testers and their executives are now seeing eye-to-eye on the benefits of automated testing. First-line managers are talking about quality, time to market, and costs—not just the percentage of tests automated or a reduction in the time to script a test case. Based on this feedback, I would not be surprised if in the next 12 months we see many leading equipment manufacturers using development groups to do feature testing (with test automation software). Companies that have not embraced this approach in another year will be the exception, and likely struggling to keep up with quality and time-to-market requirements.
Now that organizations are realizing the business benefits of speed and perfection--and automated testing tools—Fanfare anticipates that they will begin to push for a quality platform that can be shared with partner organizations and suppliers. Within equipment manufacturers, we envision this platform spanning feature testing, integration testing, and interoperability testing. For carriers, device testing, interoperability testing, and system testing. This platform would also likely be leveraged at the enterprise level, providing a communication vehicle for interacting with equipment manufacturers and sharing test assets and reports.
To date one Fanfare customer, a service provider, has already taken this step and is now using test automation as a platform within its organization. Other customers have talked about doing the same in the near future. Fanfare is excited to see customers moving in this direction and to be an enabler of this vision.
Perhaps more important is the value that these two qualities are bringing to the entire organization. For developers and testers, speed and perfection mean greater productivity, fewer headaches, and more time to focus on their “real jobs.” For executives at network equipment manufacturers and service providers, speed and perfection mean getting to the market ahead of competitors, reducing support costs (by delivering higher quality products), and retaining market share.
Customers seeking speed and perfection are finding that automated testing tools are a must-have for developers as well as testers. Many software developers once averse to testing have reported valuable time savings from using these tools. They now can test features and debug their code in a fraction of the time it would take to do manually. And by releasing higher quality code to QA, they spend less time debugging and interacting with QA/test groups. Instead they can create higher quality code faster, which is what developers prefer to do. Test engineers meanwhile have minimized the time spent writing scripts or automating tests, and can now focus on finding bugs. Some QA and test groups have experienced up to an eight-fold improvement in productivity.
More importantly, customers are finding that these gains have had an enormous business impact–from faster time to market to higher quality solutions. A leading telecom carrier, for instance, was able to reduce the time required to accept a software update (from an equipment vendor) from four months to nearly one month. And an equipment vendor substantially reduced defect escape rates. In both cases, these organizations reported that they were able to deliver high quality releases faster because developers and testers had adopted automated testing tools and processes.
I’ve also been hearing that testers and their executives are now seeing eye-to-eye on the benefits of automated testing. First-line managers are talking about quality, time to market, and costs—not just the percentage of tests automated or a reduction in the time to script a test case. Based on this feedback, I would not be surprised if in the next 12 months we see many leading equipment manufacturers using development groups to do feature testing (with test automation software). Companies that have not embraced this approach in another year will be the exception, and likely struggling to keep up with quality and time-to-market requirements.
Now that organizations are realizing the business benefits of speed and perfection--and automated testing tools—Fanfare anticipates that they will begin to push for a quality platform that can be shared with partner organizations and suppliers. Within equipment manufacturers, we envision this platform spanning feature testing, integration testing, and interoperability testing. For carriers, device testing, interoperability testing, and system testing. This platform would also likely be leveraged at the enterprise level, providing a communication vehicle for interacting with equipment manufacturers and sharing test assets and reports.
To date one Fanfare customer, a service provider, has already taken this step and is now using test automation as a platform within its organization. Other customers have talked about doing the same in the near future. Fanfare is excited to see customers moving in this direction and to be an enabler of this vision.
 | Craig Lewis is the VP of worldwide field operations. Learn more about Craig >> |
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