How to Select Correct Test Cases for Automation Testing

Step 1:

Identify the parameters on which you will base your test case as a candidate for automation.

As of now I am identifying the below parameters, you can have your own parameters depending on your application.

• Test case executed with different set of data
• Test case executed with different browser
• Test case executed with different environment
• Test case executed with complex business logic
• Test case executed with different set of users
• Test case Involves large amount of data
• Test case has any dependency
• Test case requires Special data

Step 2:

Break each application into modules. For each module, analyze and try to identify the test cases which should be automated based on the parameters. This list will vary for projects to projects and can also be enhanced to suite your needs:

Fig 1.0 (click on image to enlarge view)

Y – Yes
N – No

In a similar way, for all modules, this list can be used to identify the automation candidate test cases.

Step 3:

Consolidate and group the number of test cases for each module shown below

Fig 2.0 (click on image to enlarge view)

Figure 2.0 is quite straight forward and self explanatory. Here I am trying to quantify the details and giving an estimate to finish the testing manually.

Step 4:

Once you have identified all the granular level details, you can present them in the below way. We are now progressing to calculate the ROI.

Fig 3.0:

We should also take into account the below attributes which forms the basis of deterring the ROI:

• Purchasing and licensing cost of the tool
• Time to develop the scripts
• Time to maintain the scripts.
• Time to analyze the results manually and automatically
• Time and cost to train the resources.
• Management overheads

Was taken from