Table of Contents
Speech bullet points:
1) What makes a test valuable
2) What value automating a test provides, and doesn’t provide
3) Why developers (and testers) tend to miss important test conditions
4) How Proactive Testing™ overcomes traditional reactive testing limitations
5) Low-overhead ways to more thoroughly identify and test the highest risks
Your Ideas and Objectives
Quickly write in the Q&A.
What do you think is the most important part of test
automation?
How well are you doing with it? 0 – terrible – 5 – great
Your issues and objectives for today
Objectives
What makes a test valuable
What value automating a test provides, and doesn’t provide
Why developers (and testers) tend to miss important test conditions
How Proactive TestingTM overcomes traditional reactive testing limitations
Low-overhead ways to more thoroughly identify and test the highest risks
Benefits of Automating a Test
Can repeat the test
Can execute it faster
Reduces ‘human’ errors
Lower costs on repetition
But, Automating a Test
Won’t tell you what to test, or
How to test it well,
[beware overhype of machine learning and artificial intelligence]
And, in fact is likely to divert attention from more thorough testing
Why developers (and testers) tend to miss important test conditions
Focus on automating
Devs assume it works cause they wrote it
Testers react to design (if any) or code
Both miss design errors
How Test Automation Is Likely to Affect Risk Analysis
Automating a test takes 3-20 times as long as running it manually, so
Largely automate first tests thought of
Until out of time
How Many Ordinarily Would Be Automated? What’s the Impact?
Are these things developers are likely to think to code, let alone unit test?
With a focus on small code pieces, how many would be overlooked by user story acceptance tests too?
If they go wrong in the delivered system
How many would be showstoppers?
How much redesign and rework
About speaker:
One of the few with legitimate credentials in Quality Assurance/Testing, Business Analysis/Requirements, and Process/Project Management, Robin F. Goldsmith, JD works with and trains business and project professionals to get right results right.
Author of the Proactive Testing™ and Proactive Software Quality Assurance™ methodologies, he is a thought leader who has contributed key ideas to international standards for software testing, software quality assurance, and software acquisition.
Reach him at robin@gopromanagement.com
This is part of the speech from the online Test Automation Meetup – August 2022
