What makes automated software testing so important to these successful companies?

Automated Software Testing Saves Time and Money

Software tests have to be repeated often during development cycles to ensure quality. Every time source code is modified software tests should be repeated. For each release of the software it may be tested on all supported operating systems and hardware configurations. Manually repeating these tests is costly and time consuming. Once created, automated tests can be run over and over again at no additional cost and they are much faster than manual tests. Automated software testing can reduce the time to run repetitive tests from days to hours. A time savings that translates directly into cost savings.

Automated Software Testing Improves Accuracy

Even the most conscientious tester will make mistakes during monotonous manual testing. Automated tests perform the same steps precisely every time they are executed and never forget to record detailed results.

Automated Software Testing Increases Test Coverage

Automated software testing can increase the depth and scope of tests to help improve software quality. Lengthy tests that are often avoided during manual testing can be run unattended. They can even be run on multiple computers with different configurations. Automated software testing can look inside an application and see memory contents, data tables, file contents, and internal program states to determine if the product is behaving as expected. Automated software tests can easily execute thousands of different complex test cases during every test run providing coverage that is impossible with manual tests. Testers freed from repetitive manual tests have more time to create new automated software tests and deal with complex features.

Automated Software Testing Does What Manual Testing Cannot

Even the largest software departments cannot perform a controlled web application test with thousands of users. Automated testing can simulate tens, hundreds or thousands of virtual users interacting with network or web software and applications.

Automated Software Testing Helps Developers and Testers

Shared automated tests can be used by developers to catch problems quickly before sending to QA. Tests can run automatically whenever source code changes are checked in and notify the team or the developer if they fail. Features like these save developers time and increase their confidence.

Automated Software Testing Improves Team Morale

This is hard to measure but we’ve experienced it first hand, automated software testing can improve team morale. Automating repetitive tasks with automated software testing gives your team time to spend on more challenging and rewarding projects. Team members improve their skill sets and confidence and, in turn, pass those gains on to their organization.

Reasons for Automation testing over Manual testing.

Every software development group tests its products, yet delivered software always has defects. Test engineers strive to catch them before the product is released but they always creep in and they often reappear, even with the best manual testing processes. Automated software testing is the best way to increase the effectiveness, efficiency and coverage of your software testing.

Manual software testing is performed by a human sitting in front of a computer carefully going through application screens, trying various usage and input combinations, comparing the results to the expected behaviour and recording their observations. Manual tests are repeated often during development cycles for source code changes and other situations like multiple operating environments and hardware configurations.

An automated software testing tool is able to playback pre-recorded and predefined actions, compare the results to the expected behaviour and report the success or failure of these manual tests to a test engineer. Once automated tests are created they can easily be repeated and they can be extended to perform tasks impossible with manual testing. Because of this, savoy managers have found that automated software testing is an essential component of successful development projects. 

Tools user for automation testing :-
(QTP and Selenium is one the best tool in market for automation - QTP is paid and very easy to you and selenium is free and can work with multiple languages and browsers.)

HP Unified Functional Testing software, formerly known as Quick Test Professional and HP Quick Test Professional, provides functional and regression test automation for software applications and environments.HP Unified Functional Testing can be used for enterprise quality assurance.

HP Unified Functional Testing supports keyword and scripting interfaces and features a graphical user interface.It uses the Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript) scripting language to specify a test procedure, and to manipulate the objects and controls of the application under test.

HP Unified Functional Testing was originally written by Mercury Interactive and called QuickTest Professional.Mercury Interactive was subsequently acquired by Hewlett Packard(HP) in 2006.HP Unified Functional Testing 11.5 combined HP Quick Test Professional and HP Service Test into a single software package,which is currently available from the HP Software Division. The integrated HP Unified Functional Testing software allows developers to test from a single console all three layers of a program’s operations: the interface, the service layer and the database layer.

What is the Difference between Quality Assurance and Quality Control ?

Quality Assurance	Quality Control
A planned and systematic set of activities necessary to provide adequate confidence that requirements are properly established and products or services conform to specified requirements.	The process by which product quality is compared with applicable standards; and the action taken when nonconformance is detected.
An activity that establishes and evaluates the processes to produce the products.	An activity which verifies if the product meets pre-defined standards.
Helps establish processes.	Implements the process.
Sets up measurements programs to evaluate processes.	Verifies if specific attribute(s) are in a specific product or service
Identifies weaknesses in processes and improves them.	Identifies defects for the primary purpose of correcting defects.
QA is the responsibility of the entire team.	QC is the responsibility of the tester.
Prevents the introduction of issues or defects	Detects, reports and corrects defects
QA evaluates whether or not quality control is working for the primary purpose of determining whether or not there is a weakness in the process.	QC evaluates if the application is working for the primary purpose of determining if there is a flaw / defect in the functionalities.
QA improves the process that is applied to multiple products that will ever be produced by a process.	QC improves the development of a specific product or service.
QA personnel should not perform quality control unless doing it to validate quality control is working.	QC personnel may perform quality assurance tasks if and when required.

What are Six Commonly used Software Testing Techniques ?

Six Commonly used Software Testing Techniques are :-

- Usability testing methods
- Integration testing techniques
- Exploratory testing techniques
- Agile Testing Methods
- Regression Testing Techniques
- Sate transition software testing techniques