What value a automation tester can bring in

[Sraghav]

Hi Ankur,

this question is to Ankur Jain, who is QTP expert and organizing trainings as well as main lead of LearnQTP.

Appreciate if you could respond please?

Question is:
What value an automation tester can bring in to the role of 'Automation tester' when there are existing manual test cases, changing requirements documents, very minimal dependency on developers as they are busy and for next 3 years if automation has to be done for existing and forthcoming critical and complex data transaction applications - what results, what value addition an automation tester can bring in to the role?

Your response to a QA Lead, Dev manager and Test manager

Appreciate your response

Regards
SR

[Ankur]

First - My apologies for being a 'bit' late . I didn't see that a question was directed specifically for me. Also, if this were an open question I'm sure other experienced members may have chipped-in by now.

Coming to the answer -

1. Check that you have a good automation team at place. It makes all the difference.
   
2. Check how much of the regression testing is actually required/done by the manual testing team in every release.
   
3. Have a POC on how much of that activity identified in step 2) can be automated.
   
4. Come up with a plan and weigh the ROI you may gain out of investing your time in automation, maintenance, execution vis-a-vis manual effort currently needed.
   
5. Check pt. 1 again
   
6. In all probability, you will have a successful (automation) project delivered.