Technology is the biggest asset that common men have in their lives because our daily life revolves around some or the other technology. When it comes to technology, the first thing that comes in mind is the masterminds who have invented it. In general language, we call them engineers. Engineers can be said incomplete without their tools as they accomplish every bit of their work with the help of supporting tools.
Similar to other engineers, software engineers do have some tools that help them in getting their work done. Software technicians possess several tools including – integrated development environment, automated unit testing, configuration management tools and functional regression tools. Among this wide range of available testing tools, it is really a challenging task that which tool should be adopted for a particular testing work. To address the complexity of selecting the right tool, you need to first understand the following business case:
- As a software engineer, you must understand that to perform a task with utmost accuracy, you need a tool. If the advantages and opportunities involved in accomplishing an activity outweighs the costs and risk factors linked with the tool then, there’s a business case
- The tool has the capability to speed up the task that you are required to accomplish as a section of the project. If that particular task is on the crucial node for the successful accomplishment of the respective project, and the advantages included in speeding up the task gets more than the costs and risk factor, there’s a business case.
- The tools helps in minimizing the manual labor involved in accomplishing the task, if the benefits involved in reducing the manual labor gets more than the risk and cost factor, there’s a business case.
Apart from the above mentioned business cases, the probability of existence of other business cases remains there but, one or more of these will be surely applied.
Once you found a business case, you can start with ‘selecting the tool’ part. With the help of internet, you can comfortably find candidate tools. But here, you need a stop and think for a while that you are going to be associated with the tool that you are selecting and are ready to spend required amount of money on it. Make sure your selected tools will offer you benefits for a longer period of time. You need to be typical professional, while selecting the tool and hence, you should form a team that can help you in the same. After that start searching the tools on the internet and make a record of the shortlisted tools. Record should contain – limitations of the tool, USP of the tool, risk factor involved and other crucial factors. Now, with the team, you can discuss on the plus and minus points of the available tools and finally, can select the most appropriate one.
After selecting the tool, you need to direct it. In this part, you should choose a project that can effectively take in the risks factors involved in directing a tool. You need to keep a keen eye on the following points, while piloting a tool:
- To collect more and core information about the tool
- To invent appropriate manner of managing and using the tool
- To evaluate the ROI (Return on Investment)
If you follow these general guidelines, your tool selection would be appropriate.
