Keyword Driven Testing is a comprehensive, cross-organization test design solution that bridges the gap between the Test Automation team and the rest of the roles involved in the testing process. It allows both manual testers and other subject-matter experts to design, build and execute test automation scripts without any programming knowledge.

While most automation solutions rely on a dedicated automation team that converts manual tests to automated scripts and executes them, in Keyword Driven Testing , test automation is focused on building and maintaining the infrastructure. The same scripts, written by the testers and other domain knowledge experts, are used for both manual and automated tests. The testers themselves are responsible also for execution and analysis.

Keyword Driven Testing can be divided into two main layers:
The Infrastructure Layer is comprised of Utility Scripts and User Defined Functions. It is the engine that receives inputs (keywords) and performs operations on the tested application.
The Logical Layer is used by testers and other subject matter experts to build and execute test automation scripts using pre-defined keywords.

Keyword Driven Testing utilizes a dictionary that provides the entire organization with a language for building test automation scripts.With the KDT approach test automation is fully aligned with the business processes.

Key Benefits

Save time - by combining the test automation and test documentation to a single effort.
Improve test coverage - by letting the testers to create the automated scripts, more tests are covered and misinterpretation of the manual tests is avoided
Improve communication - between the teams by unifying the test planning language.
Reduce cost - by having a centralized, multi-tier infrastructure.
Easy to maintain - A single change in the application under test will require only a single change in the infrastructure comparing.