Testers’ Experiences of Tools and Automation
Isabel Evans · Electronic workshops in computing · 2020
Software testing is vital, expensive, time-consuming yet a necessary part of software development. Testers perform repeated actions during testing, where automation and tools could reduce costs, timescale and human error. However, challenges to tools adoption have been identified in academic research and industry, which are blockers to success with automation. A survey of over 180 testing practitioners, to collect testers’ experiences with tools and understand their tools challenges, uncovered rich stories of emotional stress, as well as evidence of ways in which usability and HCI techniques are misapplied in test tool design. This leads to suggestions for future research.