“Test Automation is not our silver bullet, but it can help us solving our problems.”
- Couldn’t recall the reference
If it isn’t a silver bullet then what is it?
Test Automation is the key to solve our major problems related timed delivery, but that cannot replace manual testing. Manual testing is unavoidable, but should be minimized, whose part is carried over by Test Automation. Thus test automation is just a monkey wrench of your garage and it can never replace the skilled mechanic who does all your jobs. Automating the test cases nowadays is misunderstood to assumptions like
- We will be able to automate all testing!
- Test automation will increase productivity so much that we’ll be able to do all the testing with fewer people (eliminate staff).
- Test automation is so easy that we won’t need to do any training.
- Automation will reduce our whole testing workload.
- We won’t need to do any test planning.
- That time-intensive test design effort will no longer be necessary.
When a manager has perceptions like these, he/she is strictly warned in not planning for automating the process.
So where does test automation fits in? As I said earlier, it is just a tool in the toolbox which will assist us, but not take over the whole job a manual tester can do and that doesn’t mean we can automate all testing!
Automation is the concept which is applicable for highly redundant/recursive tasks or scenarios in a routine which may tend to cause human error, tasks that are repetitive and in need to reduce the effort and costs involved and focus on more testing than regressing things. These should be the motive behind automating things and not ROI alone.
Automation means less effort on regressing things and more effort on testing…
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