A Review to Reality of Software Test Automation

Abstract

Testing the software is one of the most important activities in the development life cycle, but has traditionally been carried out at the end of the process, when the product is completed and is about to be released. The complexity of today's software requires the test to run in parallel with the development, so that problems are found early and can be corrected at low cost. The test automation emerged as an alternative to speed up its implementation, as well as to improve product reliability and quality. But, although his study and research began almost 50 years ago, progress still does not meet demand for quality improvement. In this article are presented the results of an integrative literature review, conducted with the aim of establishing an overview of the experiences reported on test automation. It was found that there is still no agreement on its definition and the advantages and limitations are almost personal opinions. In addition, many companies assume automation as a total replacement for manual testing, although their level of maturity still not allowed.