When to Automate

I was lucky to learn early on that when considering to introduce automation, you need to consider if there will be any financial payback in doing so.

In order for you work this out, first you need to ask the following questions:

* Do you have or can you gain sufficient knowledge of the tool and automation techniques in general to put a tool to good use?
* Will the functionality remain unchanged for long periods?
* Is the functionality easy to automate and maintain by the tester?

Only if you answer yes to the questions above, can you start to consider if automation right for you. However, you still need to investigate the following:

* Will the functionality need to be tested multiple times due to multiple internal builds before production release?
* Will the functionality need to be tested on different operating systems and/or on different browsers?
* Will the functionality need to be tested with many different types of data?
* If automation is built, will it be used for one product release or for many releases in the future?

It amazes me how many companies go head first into automating without going through a thorough elaboration phase.