Automated testing doesn’t mean you can stop manual testing altogether, and it doesn’t mean you can reduce QA Engineer headcount, because they’re needed to write and maintain test scripts.
In that case, where do cost savings come from? Two areas:
- Finding bugs early
- Lowering the average cost of testing hours
When a bug is spotted, research shows that debugging costs businesses $61 billion a year – that equates to developers wasting a whopping 620 million hours annually.
The earlier a bug is uncovered, the easier and cheaper it is to fix. Enter automated unit testing, enabling you to discover bugs faster. How? When code is compiled, a suite of tests automatically looks for bugs, creating a shorter feedback loop.
That enables faster detection of defects, and a quicker turnaround time to fix them, compared to finding the bug later on down the line – worst-case scenario, after product release.
Moreover, automated tests can be left to run long after employees have gone home for the day. Studies show that automated tests enable five times more tests to run (on average), meaning they’re fivefold faster.
In turn, that means test coverage increases dramatically (fivefold), without spending more money, therefore reducing the average cost of testing hours.