Cast Iron Automation

We just finished automating “all” of our regression test suite. Or, perhaps, we now have 4731 BDD “test scripts” that we run on each deployment. Hooray! T-shirts for everyone! Then it happens…our product changes, our tool version changes, or our infrastructure changes. Our shiny new toy becomes a tarnished, broken, and unusable pile of shattered dreams and wasted effort.

Having automation is reminiscent of owning a cast iron pan. Like cast iron cookware, and like the software for our products, our automation software requires proper care and feeding; typically, we call this maintenance. If cast iron cookware is not properly maintained, especially when it’s new, it will corrode, rust, and deteriorate to the point that it’s no longer fit for purpose. Considerable effort will be expended to restore the cookware’s usability; the same is true for automation.

In this session, Paul Grizzaffi will explore causes of automation deterioration and explain ways we can prevent our automation’s value from rusting away.

Session Takeaways
• Automation is software and must be treated as such
• Appropriate maintenance is required to sustain an automation endeavor’s value
• Maintainability must be deliberate
• We can anticipate many of the changes to our automation ecosystem, including changes to:
o Products
o Users
o Environments
o Tools
• Approaches to handle many of these and to not be surprised by the rest.

About Paul...
As a Principal Automation Architect at Magenic, Paul Grizzaffi is following his passion of providing technology solutions to testing, QE, and QA organizations, including automation assessments, implementations, and through activities benefiting the broader testing community. An accomplished keynote speaker and writer, Paul has spoken at both local and national conferences and meetings. He is an advisor to Software Test Professionals and STPCon, as well as a member of the Industry Advisory Board of the Advanced Research Center for Software Testing and Quality Assurance (STQA) at UT Dallas where he is a frequent guest lecturer. Paul enjoys sharing his experiences and learning from other testing professionals; his mostly cogent thoughts can be read on his blog at https://responsibleautomation.wordpress.com/.