95+% of test automation efforts are on test maintenance & regression testing
Many fake “agile project managers/agile coaches” are fixated with Velocity Charts. The so-called “velocity” is based on the rate of completing the story points estimated by the team. As a result, “story estimation sessions” are a part of “Agile Ceremonies” in some projects, along with“stand-up meetings”, “retrospectives” and “sprint planning”. (see the end of the article for Kent Beck’s, the father of Agile, view on these ‘agile ceremonies’)
I do not estimate points/time for developing automated tests a user story. The reason is simple: it does not make sense.
The below is a slide from a presentation I gave in…
This Week’s Most Viewed Article (2021–04–17)
Most Viewed Article Right Now: Why JavaScript Is Not a Suitable Language for Real Web Test Automation?
Most Viewed Article Last Month: Irrational and False Excuses for Web Test Automation Failures
My All-Time Most Viewed Articles (All: Categorized)
- Why Cypress sucks for real test automation? (Part 1)
- Why Gherkin (Cucumber, SpecFlow,…) Always Failed with UI Test Automation?
- Working Automated Test ≠ Good Reliable Test
- Maintainable Automated Test Design
Bio
Test Automation and Continuous Testing Coach, Speaker, Author, Trainer, Programmer, and Product Owner.
Creator of TestWise (the next-generation functional testing tool) and BuildWise, an international award-winning Continuous Testing (CT) server. …
JavaScript is OK for developing apps, but not for functional test automation, where its audience beyond programmers. Ruby is a far better choice.
I know many JavaScript programmers/testers won’t like the title of this article. However, this is the truth from my over 15 years’ observation while working in test automation. Some would argue that JS-based test automation frameworks are gaining popularity. Yes, it might be true. However, when you take the fact that most test automation failed, this recent popularity of JS-based test automation frameworks does not mean much at all.
“95% of the time, 95% of test engineers will write bad GUI automation just because it’s a very difficult thing to do correctly. …
Chose the wrong Gherkin BDD frameworks. Should have used simple RSpec or xUnit (spec style)
What is a test syntax framework?
Automation (also known as Driver) frameworks drive the application’s UI; test syntax frameworks provide the test structure and assertion mechanism.
Selenium WebDriver comes with 5 official programming languages: Ruby, Java, Python, JavaScript and C#. My Selenium WebDriver Recipes books cover all five languages.
The management chose the wrong framework. They should select Selenium WebDriver for web apps, and Appium for Mobile and Desktop apps
FACT: not many software engineers (in Test) received proper education or training in test automation, which is unfortunate. Considering this: 30–40% of staff in a software team are usually testers. Programmers and business analysts spend a lot of time performing functional testing as well. However, to my knowledge, there are few dedicated Functional Testing courses offered at universities. Therefore, it is not surprising that many wrong decisions on test automation are made due to a lack of knowledge.
In this “Why Do Most UI Test Automation Fail?” …
The reality of IT team morale is often far from IT executives’ slogans. The most effective way to reduce the gap: Continuous Testing.
I worked/consulted for many software projects, and have heard/seen some slogans created by executives. A common one is “One Team, One Dream”. Leading a ‘dream team’ certainly shows leadership quality. However, the attitude from the staff, from my observation, was more like “Another Day, Another Dollar”.
To form a dream team, the members must take pride in their work and feel satisfied from doing good work.
Move test steps into the sections that execute before/after test cases
This is one of the 6 Functional Test Refactorings:
- Extract Function
- Move Function to Helper
- Move
- Extract Page Function
- Introduce Page Object
- Rename
The structure of this article is the same as “Extract Function”. The test project that helps you do refactoring exercises quickly:
> cd my-working-dir
> git clone https://github.com/testwisely/agiletravel-ui-testsThe test project is at my-working-dir/agiletravel-ui-tests/pre-refactoring .
Motivation
You have the same set of beginning or ending test steps in multiple test cases.
Long and similar test cases are harder to maintain. …
Quality enhances Efficiency and saves Cost
Today I saw another post about “only can pick two out of GOOD, CHEAP, and FAST” in my LinkedIn feeds. This paradigm might be right for other industries, but it is not true for software development in most cases.
One of my colleagues, a cylcing lover and good agile project manger, once told me this: “for a bycycle, quality, light and price, you can only pick two”. I agree.
The software industry is quite different from the others. A top software developer’s productivity is far far higher than an average one. …
Java/C# Programming ⇒ Test Automation + Continuous Testing; Now I do coding, testing, and CT daily for my own apps and coach test automation and CT for clients.
This article is a reflection of my 15-year journey in test automation since 2005. Prior to that, I had worked mostly as a Java Programmer (contractor) for 8 years.
- (2005–2006) JWebUnit (HTMLUnit) using Intellij IDEA
- (2006–2011) Watir with RSpec
- (2011–2012) RWebSpec on top of Watir and Selenium WebDriver
- (2011–2013) Load Testing with LoadWise
In 2012, I switched to work fulltime in test automation and Continuous Testing. My love for programming was not changed, just do it differently: coding for my own products in my spare time. Thanks to my CT process, my productivy in software development is an order of…
Zhimin Zhan
Award-winning software developer, test automation & CT coach, author, and speaker. Help teams succeed with Agile/DevOps by implementing real Continuous Testing.
