Day7: How do you choose which tools to use in your testing?

Before answer this question(how, which?), we may ask: why do we need tools in our testing? Once we get the answer to the 'why' question, we might also get answers to the 'how' and 'which'.

Generally saying, only when the benefits of introducing a tool in testing are more than the risks of it, we'll consider to choose it. So, I think that always understanding the requirements of the project deeply and assessing the Return On Investment based on those requirements thoroughly could be helpful when we try to choose the most suitable tools in our testing. There're also some detailed key points as following we can consider:

• Support your project environment? for Web, Desktop or MobileApps?
• Ease of developing and maintaining test scripts? ease of test execution for your test team member?
• Support to testing approaches which your team are using,e.g BDD, Key-word-driven, Data-driven, etc?
• Produce test report?
• Support to the languages your team are using, like Java, C#, etc?
• Support to multi-browser or multi-OS where your project need to be tested? 
• Time that your team will spend on being familiar with the tool?
• Costs of using the tool? 
• ....

Anyway, using tools for testing will be definitely helpful and useful if your choice is suitable. So, go for it with the right assessment and good luck:-)