Test Automation

• We automate what we feel is worth automating.
• We need to be pragmatic about the value addition of these tests.
• We are not rushing for a rigid or an objective x% coverage.
• The goal is to automate what we should so that we can use the remaining time for higher value things.
• We don’t want to add or create more work for someone else while we do this.

Caution

Any automation script that require manual intervention (and can’t run on-demand) is not automation.

What to automate?

Prime candidates for automation are:

• Smoke tests - These are the tests that we run to make sure that the critical functionalities are working fine. You might identify these based on the happy path of the application, or your fragile areas of the application based on your experience.

Next up are:

• Regression tests - These are the tests that we run to make sure that the existing functionality is not broken. And are more thorough (not just the happy path)

Finally:

• End-to-end tests - These are the tests that we run to make sure that the entire flow is working as expected.