The objective of this industry study is to shed light on the current situation and improvement needs in software test automation. To this end, 55 industry specialists from 31 organizational units were interviewed. In parallel with the survey, a qualitative study was conducted in 12 selected software development organizations. The results indicated that the software testing processes usually follow systematic methods to a large degree, and have only little immediate or critical requirements for resources. Based on the results, the testing processes have approximately three fourths of the resources they need, and have access to a limited, but usually sufficient, group of testing tools. As
The study explores the current state of test automation in software testing organizations by focusing on the views and observations of managers, testers and developers in each organization. The case study was conducted in selected organizational units that develop and test technical software for industrial automation or telecommunication domains. The data was collected with 41 theme-based interviews in each unit. The interview data was analyzed qualitatively by using the grounded theory research method. It was found that although test automation was viewed as beneficial, it was not utilized widely in the companies. The main benefits of test automation were quality improvement, the possibility to execute more tests in less time and fluent reuse of testware. The major disadvantages were the costs associated with developing test automation especially in dynamic customized environments. Such issues as properties of tested products, attitudes of employees, resource limitations, and customers influenced the level of test automation in the case organizations.
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