Most customers have now realized that plain vanilla test automation can't win them the multi-dimensional race against time, quality and cost. Everyone is therefore bargaining for "more business value" from automation solutions. Customer's need today is quite straightforward- give me something that can be developed and deployed in minimal time, executes even faster, runs rain or shine (i.e. 24*7) without failures to make best use of available lab infrastructure, finds defects and finds them early, and .

This paper presents Infosys' best practices in this area, when we recently partnered with Europe's Tier-1 service provider, facing business-critical risks in quality, cost-competitiveness and rollout velocity of its network test solutions. Strategic themes focusing on value transformation and framework-based solution development methodology (Reuse to Produce) reduced customer's manual test spend (aka Total Cost of Ownership, TCO) by 50%. Conceptualizing "early-lifecycle" automation instead of conventional "regression-only" automation mantra significantly enhanced the Test Cycle Time (CT) and Right First Time (RFT) end-user experience for critical services. This paper describes these and our other industry-proven best practices and how they led to maximized ROI realization from test effort. We can readily reuse these practices in any test automation development environment in industry.

Sanjay Kumar has a B.E. Degree in Electronics & Telecommunications Engineering from University of Pune, and a M.B.A.

He is a seasoned IT professional with nearly a decade of specialized international hands-on and leadership experience in Software Testing & Automation projects with leading Telecom device vendors and Service providers in North America, Europe and Asia.

Sanjay has a history of transforming run of the mill Testing Projects into extremely high-performing ones that set new benchmarks for Productivity & Quality improvements and Customer delight through well-managed, on-time work products.

He is a member of Tier-3 leadership at Infosys, which is the next-generation leadership of the organization. Projects led by him have won PRIMA award approved by Infosys Board of Directors in 2006 and 2009. He recently presented upon invitation at QUEST Forum's EMEA Best Practices Conference (Paris, Jun 2009).