April 3, 2025 
Once you’ve decided to adopt test automation, the next critical decision is determining the right time to begin implementation. Your entire team needs to embrace this approach fully; otherwise, hesitation could result in wasted effort and increased costs.
A powerful guiding principle at this stage is Larry Smith’s famous advice: “Test Early, Test Often,” a cornerstone of his “Shift-Left Testing” philosophy introduced back in 2001.
To maximize the benefits of test automation, it’s crucial to begin as soon as feasible, although it’s important to recognize that test automation has its own limitations and won’t address every testing scenario.
In fact, the best time to start automating tests is typically much earlier than most teams realize. Many mistakenly believe they must complete a product or achieve a certain level of stability before automation makes sense. Unfortunately, delaying automation almost always leads to higher long-term costs.
The ideal moment to start automating your tests is probably sooner than you think. A common mistake teams make is believing they must first finish building their product or reach a certain stage of maturity before investing in automated testing. This thinking almost always proves costly.
Start early. The best time to create your first automated test is as soon as you have something testable, even if it’s just a single method or a small module. Waiting until the product is fully developed means missing countless opportunities to catch bugs early, when they’re cheapest and easiest to fix.
Imagine building a multi-story building. Would it make sense to install a safety net only after you’ve finished constructing all the floors? Obviously not. The net should be there from day one to protect workers as the building grows. Similarly, your automated tests are the safety net of your codebase: they must be in place from the beginning to provide immediate feedback and security.
Automation grows with your code. Initially, you won’t need extensive coverage because your project might only consist of a few functions or classes. But as your product evolves and its complexity increases, you’ll gradually add more tests. Over time, you’ll find that your automated tests begin to outnumber your production code, a strong indication of a mature and well-tested system.
Avoiding technical debt. The later you start automating, the greater the technical debt you accumulate. Retrofitting automated tests onto a large, complex, and untested system is difficult, slow, and costly. It leads to flaky tests, unreliable results, and, ultimately, frustration. By starting automation early, you establish good practices from the start, keeping your code clean, modular, and easy to test.
Continuous integration from day one. If automated tests are integrated into your workflow early, your team quickly develops a habit of relying on them. Every new commit triggers tests automatically, providing immediate reassurance that nothing is broken. This routine helps developers feel secure in refactoring and making improvements, resulting in faster development cycles and fewer bugs.
In summary, don’t wait for your codebase to become large and complex before starting test automation. The right time to begin is as early as possible. By doing this, you ensure speed, quality, and confidence, while significantly reducing both risk and cost.
Now that we’ve covered when to start automating, let’s discuss the next important aspect: Step 3: What exactly should you automate, and what should you leave to manual testing?
