Commercial Automation Tools versus Open Source Automation Tools (part 2 – Company culture)

The solution for proper selection of the tool is to consider and evaluate the following 4 criterions:

•  – Company Culture
•  – Delivery Methodology
•  – Software Complexity
•  – Rate & Amount of Change

Each criterion is equally important in making decision

Company culture

Company organizational culture could be divided to 5 levels according Compatibility Maturity Models (CMM): Initial, Repeatable, Defined, Managed, Optimizing.

For simplicity we can group them into 3 basic levels:

•  – Entrepreneurial
•  – Emerging
•  – Mature

On one side of the spectrum is Entrepreneurial culture. That is the case for small startup companies where everything is informal with no or little formal procedures in place.

On another side is Mature culture. That is the case for big, established company with hierarchical structure and Management by Objectives (MBO).

Emerging culture is somewhere in between those two extremes.

Open source tools are better suited for Entrepreneurial culture, might work for Emerging culture and won’t work well for Mature culture. It somewhat obvious that light, flexible, highly customizable open source automation tools are very much in line with informal style of startup companies.

And opposite is true – commercial automation tool are better suited for Mature culture where its integration with Test Management Software will give management necessary statistics/metrics and feeling of control.

Oleg