When you hear about the best-marketed restaurant in a town, but they have below standard food and hygiene ( Definitely not the right context, come on I need to start with something )
Recently during the shuffle, I moved to a new team to help them in the automation, I realized that most of the coverage was already automated, the code refactoring was something which can add value, with each day passing and refactoring the code, I realized it doesn’t look what it says.
The Nightmare
- The cucumber steps were empty but the steps were used in the feature file.
- Assertions were missing.
- Incomplete methods which do nothing as per the method or empty method which were called from the step file
- Function call in steps were commented, if those steps were failing.
At last, there was an expectation of giving the green results in reports to the stakeholders by the team management.
How bad it can be giving the green results rather than the correct results
- Bugs / Defects would be missed or we can say bugs and issues were automated.
- Setting the wrong expectation around ( Business, lead or whoever is responsible throughout the project )
- Giving less window to manual testers for their exploratory testing ( they will be involved more in Manual Regression as automation is not catching those issues )
- More issues might occur in UAT, and will probably reschedule the deadline of the project.
- Less confidence in automation results and probably the automation execution will go on silo as the results will not build confidence among teammates.
How to make sure it doesn’t happen
- Understanding the system and making sure one should give the achievable commitment to the task.
- Continuous review and feedback process from teammates ( Trust me, it always helped me keep things right )
How the Stake Holders and Owners can set the right expectation
- The development of automation is the same as the development of the project, but the expectation of keeping Automation Results Green is not right. Automation is supposed to recheck the developed project results. Results will be automatically green when the developed project doesn’t has issue.
- Everything can be automated is not right.
- One can find progressive stable automation once the development project has something to deliver.
Please share your thoughts, nightmare, and suggestions.
Totally disagree what you say. Any idiot QA will do such thing to make result pass.
Hi Jems, thanks for the thought you shared. I didn’t ask you to agree with me. I’ve just shared my experience which I’ve encountered twice different companies, different domains and different teams. But there was something common, the expectation and deadlines, less exposure and deliverables at a different level by a different set of stakeholders.