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How does one decide what to automate?

A question that has been troubling me for years is how much to automate. We all like to achieve maximum coverage and build a robust safety net where possible in order to give us confidence about the system under test. Given there is ample time i would like to automate almost everything, but in the real world, this isn't possible. This is when we introduced the concept of Value and Cost for a test scenario. Every test scenario would be assigned either of these attributes. Lets call the attribute automation classification
  • High Value - Low Cost
  • High Value - High Cost
  • Low Value - Low Cost
  • Low Value - High Cost
What this translates into is we are associating business value and cost to automate to every scenario. So, when a test scenario is of high business value and the cost to automate it is low, then this becomes our ideal automation candidate. You would like to start automating all test scenarios that fit into the High Value - Low Cost category first. See picture below


If time permits you would like to pick up (with a pinch of salt) either High Value - High Cost or Low Value - Low Cost test scenarios for automation. But, it is a complete no no to automate test scenarios that are of Low business value and High Cost to automate.

Hope this helps!! :)

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