The Next Level of Test Automation: What About the Users?
Kristian Wiklund, Monika Wiklund · 2018
Test automation is an enabler for effective and efficient software development and is widely embraced thanks to agile practices such as continuous integration. Based on our own experience and observations, we conjecture that the majority of test automation today is script based and focused on execution, where testers explicitly implement "how" to do the test. This is a labor-intensive and potentially error-prone endeavor that have the potential to be a significant bottleneck for even productivity and speed in software development. Hence, we consider it clear that "the next level of test automation" to a greater extent will be about "what" to test and not "how" to test it, which will require more advanced test tools and test systems compared to today's relatively simple mechanisms. We propose that this will result in an increased dependency to tools developed outside the user organizations, partially due to the cost and complexity of development of advanced tools, and partially due to the competence needed to understand and implement the necessary algorithms which simply will not be available in most development projects. In this paper, we draw on our experience from using and developing test automation tools to propose a number of challenges that we believe need to be considered when introducing new approaches to test automation in industry.