During our popular Ask Me Anything on Playwright with @utchbe, a practical concern was raised by Bob Honeycutt regarding the transition to Playwright:
“If we have an established collection of SpecFlow C# test scenarios, is there value in moving to Playwright? We’re continuously adding to these scenarios and are concerned about starting over. Is there a way to migrate them?”
Bob’s question taps into the common challenge of transitioning between testing frameworks without losing existing work. Please share any insights or advice on migrating from SpecFlow to Playwright or the benefits and drawbacks of such a move.
Only the person asking would know the reasons why he’s considering the change.
Migrating is rewriting them, no way around it.
List all the things you gain and lose. Discuss with the implementation team, and business or IT manager(who’s interested in automation outcomes and budgets it).
Playwright has a few common frameworks where they document a few tricks for when writing the new code based on the old one.
SpecFlow isn’t among them.
I agree with @ipstefan - You have to understand what is the reason for the change.
I always start with “What is the problem being solved?”
Then I would suggest asking questions about why the change is desired (I sometimes call it “Rude Q&A” meaning that the intent is to go deep and confront the reasoning) What is the benefit of doing all that work?
Obviously I dont know the specific situation. But one question I would ask is “Can the organization support both?” Why not extract the cases or scenarios in which Playwright would offer an advantage and deeper understanding about the quality of the project?