How to Set up Test Automation as a Business Enabler

Test automation strategy is not a one-size-fits-all. An automation suite in one organization may not work in another due to its unique setup. There are, however, best practices that you can employ within your business to ensure that your test automation strategy is set up for success. 

In this article, we spoke with Anand Chandra, Global Head of Pre-Sales, and growth leader for Europe APAC from Accolite, and received his expert advice on what to consider before setting up a test automation strategy as a business enabler for modernization. 

Anand Chandra on how to set up test automation as a business enabler

In short, the key is to discover the critical application features and functions based on business priorities and to understand the importance of the underlying functionalities being implemented.

To get to this point, it relies on a strong collaboration between business and IT to deliver genuine business value.

The following are the points to consider when establishing test automation as a business enabler:

• Business. Evaluate criticality using technology, business, and a regulatory lens across the application landscape to focus on delivering effectiveness 
• Risk. Increase Operational Risk Coverage – identify and eliminate inadequate or failed procedures, systems, or policies within an investment banking (IB) IT application landscape 
• Automation. Targeted automation through evaluating specific challenges – Testing, Environment, Data, Process. Leverage tools like GitLab to create an environment for automation as part of the software development life cycle (SDLC)

• Cloud. Focus on creating business value through evaluating business priorities. Cloud should not be chosen for the sake of it, but where it can add value 
• Data. Leverage internal toolset and/or external tools like Leapwork to create a test data set for testing

The milestones of a cloud transition strategy

Depending on the company, the transition strategy for test automation and the path to maturity have short-term, medium-term, and long-term milestones. In general, these can be summarized as the following:

• Short-term. Optimization of existing ecosystem spreads between short-term to medium-term and is centered around environment setup and finalization of the automation path for manual processes with maximum redundancy 

• Medium-term. Cultural change is a medium to long-term book of work with a focus on simplification, the quantified assessment of the automation landscape to drive adoption, and re-skilling the teams. Cultural change is an assessment of test engineering maturity based on the critical business capabilities
• Long-term. Delivering business value is the final stage of an integrated cloud test environment. Continuous testing of business change functions and code-free automation like Leapwork is aligned to industry standards, best practices and sets the tone for firm-wide cultural change

As Anand concluded, focusing on the business enablers to effectively deliver the core business values is key. It requires the right balance of an effective approach to optimize an existing ecosystem and to build the right set of capabilities within the organization to drive adoption. 

So, what are the capabilities needed to help drive the adoption of test automation at scale?

You can learn more about building the right set of capabilities within the organization to drive adoption at scale by joining our webinar on setting up test automation as a business enabler.