Functional Test Automation
JOSE FAJARDO, Elfriede Dustin · 2012
This chapter explores the business case for automating your functional testing, the alternative automation approaches to consider, and organizational considerations and techniques for maintaining and managing your test automation assets. The key is to understand when automation works and when it does not, and how to assure your success. Expanding your test coverage is one of the most valuable benefits of automation because it translates into higher quality and thus less costs associated with downtime, errors, and rework. Conventional wisdom holds that you should automate your tests only for regression testing; that is, the initial deployment should be performed manually and only successive changes automated. This belief arises from the historical record or playback approach to test automation, which requires that the software be completed and stable before scripts can be captured. Automation is all about predictability. If you cannot express the precise inputs and expected outputs, you cannot automate a test. This means that it should be used to verify what is known or predicted.