Software Test Automation in Practice: Empirical Observations

Abstract

The objective of this industry study is to shed light on the current situation and improvement needs in software test automation. To this end, 55 industry specialists from 31 organizational units were interviewed. In parallel with the survey, a qualitative study was conducted in 12 selected software development organizations. The results indicated that the software testing processes usually follow systematic methods to a large degree, and have only little immediate or critical requirements for resources. Based on the results, the testing processes have approximately three fourths of the resources they need, and have access to a limited, but usually sufficient, group of testing tools. As for the test automation, the situation is not as straightforward: based on our study, the applicability of test automation is still limited and its adaptation to testing contains practical difficulties in usability. In this study, we analyze and discuss these limitations and difficulties.