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

Is this a bug?

I was flying from Cape Town to Bangalore through emirates flight. It is convenient to online check-in. I do it as I can choose an aisle seat. But for the second time, I got into problem while doing online checking for emirates. Probably the Internet connection was slow – in both occasions, emirates online application did not respond and I had to close the browser after 5-10 minutes of frustrating wait – staring at screen.

Here is the bug that frustrated me…

· I try to do an online check in and would like to change the seats.
· Application hangs when trying to save the changes.
· Close the browser.
· Try again to do check-in
· Get a message that the passengers have been checked in.

Fine – how will I know what are my seat numbers? How do I view my check-in details.

Apparently there are no easily reachable ways to gather information. Probably there is none. How do I search where is “view check-in details” or “view eBoarding Pass” or something similar? I tried site map, tried “Help” and tried “search”… could not figure out the link for viewing check-in details.


Is this a bug? If you are a tester will you catch this bug? If you are a developer will you accept that this is a bug? I am sure most people will say “if this is an intended functionality (I think, it is), then it should be documented requirement specifications. Once it is there, tester can write the test case and developer will make sure that the functionality is coded and tested”. Some testers might say this is “nice to have feature” …

What might have happened here? Requirements problem? Development problem? Or a Testing problem?