I've run into both. I've seen orgs where the mandate 'automate everything' came down and everyone had to become a SDET (software development engineer in test) or find other work somewhere else. I've also seen places that having been burned by automation snake oil (see stuff by james bach for good examples of this) and there was a strong mindset of 'automation doesn't work'
I my mind it's just a tool, a powerful tool if used wisely, but an expensive and frustrating one if not used properly. In terms of tools, if manual testing is a drill, then automation is a hammer. while it might be possible to somehow use one to do the job of the other, it's not generally the best idea. It seems to me that you are in a trap. You've been given a task but not empowered to complete the task. That's frankly not fair to you, as you are being setup in a situation where you have to work basically unpaid overtime or fail in your goals. One potential way out is to get yourself a quick win, demonstrate some success with automation (and learn the time it takes you to do it) and then demand that they either give you the time or remove the task, since you are in a no-win situation otherwise. Testing automation works best IMHO in one of the following situations 1) same test repeated frequently e.g daily unit tests, build validation tests, acceptance tests (if you are using them as a way to track progress and show what's working and what's not instead of just at the end) 2) same test repeated with different data: e.g. combinatorial testing (like testing the word 'font settings' ui), or testing an input field with a large number of 'valid' vs 'invalid' values to see that they are all properly accepted or rejected. 3) not humanly feasable or possible (loadtesting, performance testing) 4) Utiities to save time (does it take 2 hours to setup your test env and load it with data? automate it) or improve testing process (is the environment setup complicated with ots of settings that need to be set the same way to allow test results to be replicated?) 5) regression suites which are boring as hell to execute manually over and over.. One problem is that many of these rarely find bugs after the test is first written. and since a tester's goal is generaly to find bugs, that can be a problem. If I'm looking for a quick win, I want something that can benefit the entire team, so something like a useful utility script (if you've a need for one) or a BVT type test to save people from wasting time with bad buids, might be your best bet.. The tests of type 3 are often complicated to setup and may require a speciaized environment to run them, so that wouldn't be my first choice, OTOH managers LOVE graphs and numbers so something that reports on the product performance and can be run on each build might be a way to gain some good visibility. What is it you are assigned to do in terms of scripting? can you find something in there you believe might represent a potential 'quick win' and/or proof-of-concept? On Apr 4, 11:14 am, George <george.sand...@gmail.com> wrote: > It seems that I've been encountering more people within my workplace > (and, alas, even within my own QA team!) that are not sold on test > automation. From what I've learned so far, there seems that automation > will never cover 100% of what needs to be tested, but this doesn't > negate the need. > > Another frustration is that I've been tasked to write automation > scripts as part of my year-end goals. However, I haven't been assigned > hours in my work week to do them! All of my script development has > been after-hours and weekends (notice I'm posting this on a > Saturday!). > > Has anyone else run into naysayers? How can I convince the decision- > makers that this is a worthwhile effort? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Watir General" group. To post to this group, send email to watir-general@googlegroups.com Before posting, please read the following guidelines: http://wiki.openqa.org/display/WTR/Support To unsubscribe from this group, send email to watir-general-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/watir-general -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
