Thursday, May 14, 2009

10 ways to make automation difficult or ineffective

Here goes another 10 items list for automation. If you are in IT or IT services space and manage/deliver automation solutions -- make sure you stay away from these as these items have high likely hood of making automation inefficient/ineffective and difficult.

This list is an extension of a topic and this list (of 10 items again) for test automation outsourcing

10. Wild Desire to automate 100%

9.Attempting to automate existing test cases without scrutinizing them for “suitability” to automate

8. Mapping test case to script 1:1 linear model – falling prey to deceptive traceability and gold plated reporting.

7.Not building automation solution bottom-up , unidentifiable building block of the solution.

6. Trying only one type of automation or attacking only one layer of the application – Farther you go from code, messier it gets.

5. Focusing only test execution related tasks

4. Treating automation as scripting – ignoring “generally accepted good software development practices for hygiene.

3. Failure to involve developers from the beginning – Not attempting to testability or automatability of the application.

2. Jumping to automation to speed up testing or save cost before fixing testing problems – inadequate, inefficient and broken.

1. Failure to arrive (formulate) at the right mix of human testing and automated test execution.

0. Using Automation as solution to testing problems.

I reiterate that these are applicable mostly to COTS driven, GUI functional Testing automation that is typical in IT/IT services environments. WI might have to rewrite some of these for xUnit type formalized unit testing (that is also automation and some call it even as "testing").

Shrini

6 comments:

loron said...

automation tools are however very expensive

Unknown said...

This hits so close to home it almost hurts ! Nice list !

Lalit Kale said...

you invoked my thinking part brain!

Jeroen Rosink said...

Interesting list you posted again.
Perhaps it is too early for me, I count 11 ways instead of 10 :)

What triggered me was the title: Difficult or ineffective. I can imagine that it also can be both. Would it be taking to much time to express which way is more difficult then ineffective and vice versa? And which ways are both?

Thanks in advance.
Jeroen

Anonymous said...

Good post....... i really like the way u had presented your post. But i think it will be really much better if you added few more stuffs with this article... I am working as a automation engineer in www.macrotesting.com. Expecting much more Articles from you.

cheers
sakthi..

Anonymous said...

There is 11 ways in your post
from 10 to 0 = 11 not 10 :D