How to select the Right Testing Tool: Key considerations

With an overwhelming number of testing tools on the market, choosing the right tool for your testing purposes will be a much difficult decision to make. These tools offer a number of different features at different prices which makes it more confusing. How you should select the right testing tool ?The simple and the right answer is ”It depends”. It depends on your organization, your product, your needs, and list goes on. How ever these are my main considerations to select the most appropriate testing tool. Hope these would help you in the process.

• Defect categories

What are the categories of critical bugs that you find ?and where do they appear? These two questions give you a good starting point. After selecting the tool you should consider whether the tool is able to catch the above showstopper bugs. If the answer is “No” then it is better to continue the tool selection process.

• Cost

Cost is a huge concern when selecting any product and it is the same with testing tools. It is also a challenge to select the tool that fits both your needs and the budget. Different testing tools cost differently. Some tools offer monthly rates while other charge annually , some charge for the no of test runs. No of projects, no of team members are also considered. Your budget will depend on your organization. For an example if you are in a startup organization you will have a budget constrain. Most of the tools offer free trials and also a version that is cheaper. However though it appears to be cheaper in most of these versions all the features and functionalities are not available. However your budget and, what fits your budget highly depends on your goals. There are also free and open source tools to consider.

• Ease of use

After selecting the tool and purchasing it you can start testing. Now testing would be fun if the tool you choose is an easy to use kind. If it is way too complex it will become a major problem. Ease of use should be an essential consideration when you are new to testing. To check this you can use free trials before purchasing the tool. If you are already using a testing tool and want to replace it with a new one, consider the similarities when using the tool. These similarities will help you to adopt to the new one.

• Reporting

Most of the testing tools that you choose will provide you a report that includes final test results. The content of the test report may vary from tool to tool. Some reports may contain basic details of the testing, score, matrices, summary etc. Others may generate more detailed reports. It is worth considering how easy it is to understand these reports, whether it includes the details and result you expect from it, or whether it fits your current reporting system.

Moreover, check the form in which the report is presented, and whether it can be customized, whether reports can be downloaded as spreadsheets or pdf.

• Integration with other tools

Integration is important as much as reporting and costing. Most of the tools provide integration with other tools. You should check whether it can be integrated with other related tools you use. Such as test management tools ,analytical tools etc. Integration will help in generating comprehensive reports. You could get the help of a developer to implement these integrations.

• Support

It is essential to consider the support for any technical product. There are different levels of support offered by different vendors. And the types of support offered also can vary. It becomes more and more important if the testing tool is complex and difficult to understand.

Apart from these considerations there are a number of other things to consider. Choosing the right testing tool will always be a tough decision to make. But remember it always depends on many other things. Always consider your organization’s requirements, goals and resources and you will be able to narrow down the long list of testing tools to a manageable few. Along with above considerations, comparison, research and discussions with your teams will help you through the process.