Stuff You Automation
Break down traditional QA silos and empower developers to own quality checks.
All hail the tests! All hail the tests! …
… Oh-no, the tests! Oh-no, the tests!
As far as automation goes, haven’t we all been there? We’ve been reading up on some new automation tooling or framework that is meant to solve all our manual woes. We have a grin so large our “coffee-stained” teeth are showing. We’re all excited and ready, so we begin writing the skeleton code for our automation suite.
Fast forward a month or two, and everything has been running smoothly. At this point, we think we’ve hit the jackpot! Until suddenly, we begin to notice errors never seen before.
The Dream
Testers and developers dream of having an automation suite that runs error-free. Unfortunately, reality reveals an entirely different narrative:
- 100% pass rates diminish as test suites grow.
- Perfect parallel execution throws a fit now and then.
- “Element not found” exceptions are a reoccurring occurrence.
The list could go on, but I’m sure you get the picture.
There’s an expression that reads: “To dangle a carrot in front of someone”. If we stretched that expression to test automation, this would mean that error-free test automation is always out of reach. You may be able to sway that carrot towards you just enough to touch it, but that momentum will see it fall back.
It’s Alive
Automation consists of many moving parts and multiple considerations when building it, such as:
- Language.
- Third-party integrations.
- Error handling.
- Reporting.
- Assertions.
The list could go on, but I’m sure you get the picture.
Automation is a technical and coding implementation, however, not all QA engineers have that technical experience in the beginning. Different experience levels may lead to some interesting lines of code.
Experienced QA engineers that write automation aren’t let off the hook here either. False-Positives can occur as a tendency to overlook things just to bring a test to life. A little tweaking here, a little tweaking there, bam! It’s alive!
I’m sure there are far more Frankenstein automation suites in existence than we may want to acknowledge. And there’s nothing wrong with it, just, don’t let them take over the world.
Snooze
Automated tests are exciting! But waiting for them to complete can sometimes be monotonous. By the 100th run, you know exactly what’s about to happen. Kudos to you if your tests are running in parallel, that means you may get that failure sooner than later *sigh.
But while they run, you may as well do something productive, like Googling “funny cat videos”.
Outro
Automation is great, there's a lot of value that it can bring. But remember that there’s no perfect tool or framework out there to give you the perfect automation suite.
Achieving an automation suite that is, flawless and free of faults is the dream.
If yours is failing from time to time, then consider yourself a part of the majority because you’ll soon see yourself chanting: “All hail the tests! Oh-no, the tests!
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