Before starting and automation project one has to know whether he/she

has the build(.exe) or not
whether the req tools are installed or not
should have the knowledge of the tools
what to test yah! At the same time,



we have to know the flow path of the execution.
Scenarios could be written.
Not all the test cases could be automated.only test cases which are critical to manual testing are automated.
For the project which is always having possiblility to release versions that are automated.
Tests which tested manually with diff.sets of data are automated.
By using logical methods(loops and functions)we can retrive the data from databases are going to be automated.   _{Your Comment}