Testing as you may know is the process of validating and verifying that a piece of software or hardware is working according to the way it's expected to work. Testing is a very important part of the software development life cycle (SDLC) as it helps in improving the quality of the product developed. There are multiple types and levels of testing, for example, white-box, black-box, unit, integration, system, acceptance, performance, security, functional, non-functional, and so on. Each of these types of testing are done either manually or through automation, using automation tools.

Test automation, as the name suggests, refers to automating the testing process. This can be done for different testing types and levels such as unit testing, integration testing, functional testing, and so on, through different means either by coding or by using tools. Test automation gives an advantage of running tests in numerous ways such as at regular intervals or as part of the application build. This helps in identifying bugs at the initial phase of development itself, hence reducing the product timeline and improving the product quality. It also helps in reducing the repetitive manual testing effort and allows manual testing teams to focus on testing new features and complex scenarios.