What are some observations for quality assurance and web automation?

(Sean) #1

Hey guys,

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been researching web automation and quality assurance in relation to web automation. I’ve met with folks who have tons of experience with web automation, to people who are interested in learning about it.

Here are some opinions people have expressed:

  • “I prefer coding over using non-coding environments for web automation”
  • “Web automation is a good gateway to learning to code and further job security”
  • Web automation is actually not automation because you need to manually specify each individual actions.
  • Quality Assurance is changing rapidly and companies are moving away from having manual testers. Instead, the work is being offshored or the QA person is transitioned into a more developer heavy role.

Those are a couple things I’ve found.

What opinions or realizations have you come across in your work & in your teams? Have you implemented web automation testing in your teams? Was it successful? If so, what contributed to the success? If not, why?

(Richard) #2

I work in developing testing tools and in my experience, I have found that the ones that succeed are the ones who have the desire to learn new techniques or tools.
This could include learning how to code or learning a new programming language or framework for those who already know basic script writing. I would agree with most of the statements above except for maybe the prefer coding part. This may be true for developers, but I know a lot of software testers who would be perfectly happy not writing a single line of code and are certainly still successful.

Coding or not, I truly believe that success comes from constant learning and encouraging your team to do the same (pick your battles though, because few may not be open to it). That way you could provide insight on how to improve processes in place, whether that is automated or manual processes.