Now, before starting with automating your manual test cases using QTP, wouldn’t it be a good idea to check whether your test cases can really be automated in the first place? Even if the test cases can be automated, is it really worth the effort? This article would help you find that out.

Can your Test Cases be Automated using QTP?

In this section, we’ll see what sort of applications / test cases can’t be automated using QTP:

• Does QTP support the technology used to build your application? Now this is the first thing that needs to be checked. There are certain programming languages such as C++ that are not supported by QTP. Hence if yours is a C++ application then QTP is not for you.
• Do your Test Cases require Manual Intervention? Consider an end to end order creation test case where once the order request is placed, manual intervention is needed to help flow the order from one system to another. Its always better not to automate such cases.
• Does your Test Case needs to be checked in multiple Browsers? There are many browsers such as Chrome, Netscape,  Safari etc that are not supported by QTP. Hence if you want to check your test cases in any of these browsers, QTP wouldn’t be of any help to you.
• Some things just can’t be fully automated. Consider a scenario where you need to place an order and verify that an sms is sent to the concerned person. Such test cases can’t be automated completely. Though it can definitely be argued that the scenario can be partially automated.

Is it Worth Automating? The Return On Investment (ROI) Perspective

Now, there would be many cases where you’d have some test cases to automate but it would really not make any sense to automate them. In this section, we’ll discuss some of those scenarios.

• Test Cases that need to be executed once or twice. Imagine that you have some test cases that you need to execute only once or twice. There’s really no point in spending few hours to automate some test case(s) that you would running once or twice only, that too when total execution time of all the runs is lesser than the time taken to automate those test cases. Ideally greater the number of runs of your automated scripts, better is the ROI.
• Does your application undergo frequent changes? Now if the application that you are planning to automate undergoes frequent changes, then most of your time would be spent on maintenance of the scripts. Ideally, such applications should not be considered for automation. Lesser the changes needed in your application, lesser is the effort required for test case maintenance and hence greater is the ROI.
• Do It Now testing. Suppose that at this moment you get a list of test cases that need to be checked as soon as possible. In this situation, the primary goal is to finish the testing as soon as possible rather than spending a couple of hours to automate the scenarios. Hence automation is generally a No for such scenarios.
• Ad-hoc testing. If you have any test cases that need to be checked in an ad-hoc manner, without any proper plan or test case flow, then it is always better to keep them out of the automation scope.

Now this is definitely not an exhaustive list that covers all the points that should be kept in mind while deciding to go for automation using QTP. If you have any other points to add, please use the comments section to let us know about the same. Happy Reading .. ::-))