Key findings from the automation report include:
Only 5% of survey respondents said they currently carry out 0:100 manual:automation testing. The majority (66%) are either at 75:25 or 50:50, and 9% said they are only doing manual testing.
When asked what they’d like to achieve in the next five years, the majority (73%) said they’d like to see 50:50 to 25:75 manual:automation testing. 14% said they’d like to have no manual testing at all.
The majority of respondents reported seeing a return on their test automation investment immediately (24%) or within the first 6 months (24%). The remainder saw a result within 6‑12 months (28%) or after one year (15%). Only 9% reported never getting an ROI.
The majority of respondents (94%) said they use test execution tools and automation to support testing efforts. Other popular answers include generation of test data (57%) and deployment of environments (49%).
The survey respondents reported that the primary users of their testing tools are test automation specialists (55%) and testers (27%). Developers make up just 6%. Other responses included offshore contractors software engineers, and product owners.
When asked what automation currently exists in organizations, there were a wide variety of responses. UI (82%) is the most popular; APIs (62%), cross-browser/platform (55%), test data/environment (55%), performance (53%) and integration (47%) are all very even. Interestingly, automation in the ecosystem scored the lowest at just 6%.
Shameless plug, but it is important to note that our own ZeuZ automation testing platform supports all of the trends, including UI testing, APIs, cross-platform, performance/stress testing, and can be integrated with your continuous integration and delivery workflow.