Automated testing is widely considered an excellent way to increase the efficiency of your QA pipeline. However, it’s also safe to say that not every testing process should be automated.

Picking the right methodology depends on a variety of factors, ranging from project requirements and budgeting to issues of scaling.

One of these important factors is timing. Deciding whether to automate your software QA is an important question, and it requires deliberation. However, knowing when to automate can help you leverage the advantages of automation while hopefully avoiding its pitfalls.

In this article, we’ll consider the various questions you should ask before deciding to automate a part of your software QA. Additionally, we’ll take a look at some of the types of testing that typically benefit most from automation, which can help you pinpoint which parts of your project are ideal candidates.

When to Automate QA as a Startup?

For better or worse, there is no catch-all answer to this question that fits every team and every project. One way or another, you’ll need to take a look at your QA testing and answer some important questions before making an informed decision.

This is doubly true for startups because decisions made in the early stages of development can often set the pace for the entire project.

Here are some important questions to ask if you want to know whether you’re ready for QA test automation.

Which Stage of Development are You In?

Although every project has its flow, most startups can be divided into four stages of development. Let’s consider some of them and how QA automation may relate to startups:

  • MVP – The minimal viable product, i.e. the most barebones version of the product you can put out. Although automation is rarely even discussed at this stage, some believe that establishing automation frameworks as early as possible can save you a lot of time and money down the line.
  • Early stage – This stage is all about refining the product and making sure it fits market requirements. Functionality, security, and stability tests become increasingly important in this part of the development cycle, which are all common candidates for automation.
  • Growth stage – As the name implies, this part is all about scaling the product and quickly expanding its features. Scaling and automation often go hand-in-hand, which is why many teams already automate at least a part of their QA by this point. However, you should still carefully consider the goals and requirements of your tests before deciding to automate.
  • Late stage – otherwise known as startup maturity, it generally involves maintenance, updates, and looking for opportunities to expand and scale even further. Implementing automation may be difficult this late into development because testing processes are already established and entrenched. However, stubbornly refusing to automate can cost you even more in the long run, so don’t dismiss it outright either.

Your project’s development doesn’t necessarily neatly fit into any of these stages. However, considering them can help you more easily identify the goals and applicability of QA automation.

What are the Goals of Automation?

The next question you need to ask is one of strategy rather than implementation. It seems obvious, but it’s a step many inexperienced developers often skip.

In short, before you can know when to automate QA, you need to ascertain why you’re doing it in the first place. Ask yourself questions such as:

  • What business risks are we protecting against?
  • What resources do we have, and how do we use them best?
  • Which tests can be reasonably automated, and will automation improve them?
  • How can automation lead to more efficiency in achieving our goals?

Once you have answers to these questions, you can start planning the steps you need to take to automate your quality assurance.

How Will the Product Change During Development?

The next question can be very difficult to answer, but having a straight answer can save you a lot of work and money.

As any experienced developer will tell you, no project is a straight line from start to finish. You will have to iterate, pivot, and replace parts of your code, probably many times, and through a lot of different developers.

With that in mind, automating too early can end up being a massive, unnecessary expense. You could end up in a situation where you have to throw out entire tests and pipelines because they no longer fit into the goals and requirements of the project.

In comparison to manual testing, QA automation often comes with hefty initial costs. As such, you don’t want to waste resources on automating unless you’re positive the investment will pay off. This is especially true for startups, which generally don’t have many resources to spare.

Of course, holding off on automation too long can also be a problem. Trying to rapidly scale testing using nothing but manual testers can create bottlenecks that would have been easier to tackle during an earlier stage.

Prepare for the future by considering things like:

  • Which parts of the product do you expect will change as it develops, and how?
  • How will the progress and scale of development affect testing?
  • Will the current goals of your tests remain the same later?

All in all, anyone considering QA automation needs to consider both the current and future state of the project.

How Will the Project Scale?

One of the most common pieces of advice startups receive is to plan for scaling. The same applies to software QA – you need to plan how the product will grow and how you intend to keep up with said growth.

With that in mind, automating as early as possible seems like a sound idea. To be frank, it often is – if you have a clear goal in mind and the resources to pull it off, automate your tests as early as possible. If implemented well, this approach can catch issues early on and prevent them from becoming massive failures down the line.

However, that’s not always feasible. In most cases, startups have more pressing matters to deal with, matters that require both immediate attention and a ton of resources. Moreover, as we mentioned earlier, overly ambitious implementation of automated QA can end up straining your budget unnecessarily with little to no payoff.

In that regard, deciding when to automate is a careful balancing act and a matter of ROI. Early momentum and scalability are important, but not at the cost of hamstringing the entire project.

Types of Testing & When to Automate Them

Another important thing to remember about QA test automation is that it’s not suitable for every type of use case. There are many types of automated tests out there, and you don’t have to start all of them at once.

Some types of automated QA benefit from early implementation more than others. Thankfully, you can always pick and choose which parts of your QA process you wish to automate at which point, adapting the implementation to your project requirements.

We’ll now go through some of the most common types of automated testing for startups and consider when you might want to implement them.

Unit Testing

Unit testing is the process of testing small, isolated parts of code and validating results. These so-called units are very small pieces of the source code, typically functions or methods. The piece-by-piece approach of unit testing is ideal for catching bugs early, increasing code quality, and preventing a build-up of technical debt.

Unit testing is often concerned with the smallest part of the product that can be tested at all. As such, the tests themselves are typically simple, fast to execute, and easy to maintain. Running the tests isn’t a huge burden even for the smallest teams. Moreover, unit tests that break during development due to internal changes are relatively easy to fix and iterate on.

That’s why automating unit tests as early as possible is often a very cost-effective way to streamline the entire QA process. Put simply, the traditional drawbacks of QA automation are less prevalent for this type, while the return on investment can be massive.

API Testing

As the name implies, API testing focuses on testing application programming interfaces, their behaviour, and their integration with other software. Most applications nowadays have some form of API as part of their ecosystem, which is why API testing is a crucial part of modern QA.

However, this also means that APIs are often critical to a project’s infrastructure. Testing them is more complex than unit testing, which is why writing and maintaining API tests is a bit more involved (and costly). This translates into higher resource requirements, which may prevent some startups from automating API tests early.

With that in mind, you shouldn’t automate API tests as early as, say, unit tests. For starters, APIs and their integrations often change a lot during the early stages of development. This can quickly render your automation efforts pointless, leaving you with little more than an unnecessary resource sink.

That said, most industry veterans recommend implementing automated API tests as soon as you have access to them in a staging/QA environment. At this point, APIs are often stable enough that you can build a testing methodology without worrying about constant changes. Moreover, these tests are still typically smaller and faster to execute than many other types of QA automation. Early adoption is viable even for small teams with limited resources – just be careful not to overdo it.

End-to-end Testing

End-to-end testing simulates the user’s experience of the product, thereby revealing issues with its functionality. Considering that all software is made for actual users, this type of QA is critical for ensuring a marketable and usable product.

For starters, we should mention that automating end-to-end tests at all can be prohibitively difficult or downright impossible. These tests are extensive, complex, and much slower to execute than most API tests, let alone unit tests. Automation is generally best left for simple, repetitive test cases that don’t require complicated actions.

Of course, automating E2E testing is still common in the QA industry and can be achieved through different tools. However, automated End-to-end tests are comparatively difficult to update and maintain.

Keep in mind that software tends to change often and fast during the early stages of development. Trying to keep up with these changes with an automated test suite can feel like a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. Besides, having to constantly update, alter, and adapt the tests puts a massive strain on your QA team with next to no long-term payoff.

If you’re going to automate end-to-end testing at all, it’s best to do so during a later stage of development. Most teams leave it for the end of an iteration cycle, or when the product is stable enough to deploy to production.

Load/Performance Testing

Performance tests are designed to determine how well software performs in terms of speed, responsiveness, and stability. Many performance tests simulate high loads to achieve this, which is why performance testing is often a matter of scaling.

Considering the common piece of developer wisdom that scaling should be tackled early on, many teams rush to automate load tests as soon as possible. To be frank, though, most startups don’t need to worry about speed or loads before full deployment. Even then, your product will need to reach a certain level of traffic before load spikes become an actual issue. After all, not every project will be massively successful right out of the gate.

However, it’s also worth noting that performance tests are often all about future-proofing. In other words, a relatively early implementation can protect you against massive problems down the line.

That means that knowing when to automate performance tests is trickier than with many other types of QA. Unfortunately, all we can say is that the best time to automate is when the project actually needs it.

For example, if you’re working on a project intended for massive user bases, you may wish to consider load tests sooner rather than later. If speed, reliability, and stability are key selling points for your product, automating performance tests early may be worthwhile.

However, unless these types of tests are absolutely necessary for your goals, you might consider investing those resources elsewhere.

Conclusion – When Is the Right Time to Automate?

As we’ve stated at the beginning of this article, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to software QA. Deciding when, why, and how to automate your QA process will always depend on the specifics of the project.

However, there are still some basic principles that you can rely on to guide your QA strategy. The first thing to do is identify the types of testing your product requires and how (and why) they can be implemented. Only then can you also know when to automate.

As a general rule, simple tests that can easily be updated and changed on the fly are ideal candidates for early implementation. This often refers to unit testing, API testing, and similar methodologies.

On the flip side, automating complex types of tests, such as E2E, is a costly endeavour even under the best circumstances. Attempting to implement such test cases early is not only resource-intensive, but can also lead to a lot of frustration due to a constant need for updates and changes.

If you want to pick the right time, carefully evaluate the costs, benefits, and potential bottlenecks of every part of your QA strategy. This can tell you not only which tests you could automate for efficiency, but also the best time to automate them.

Of course, we understand that making such important decisions is not easy at all. If you need some help understanding QA automation and the best way it can help your project, don’t hesitate to get in touch with the TechTailors team. You can also check out the rest of our blog for more articles like this one.