Maintainability is an integral characteristic comprising the following:

• Updates in test logic and/or GUI mapping caused by the changes in the application under test.
• Design or refactoring of automation for the purpose of expansion of coverage.
• Expansion or update of data set.
• Execution, testing, and debugging of testing scripts.

New environment setup

• Data changes only required in case of database changes.
• No code changes required.
• No changes in GUI mapping required.
• Configuration file – single point of changes.

Application change – GUI

• Only changes in GUI mapping required for the affected GUI objects.
• No code changes required.

Application change – business logic

• No changes in GUI mapping required except for new GUI objects.
• Only changes in affected test logic modules required, without duplication of work.

Failure criteria:

• Hard-coded data.
• Duplication of functionalities.
• Code maintenance effort depends on the number of test cases for the same functionality.