How To Succeed When Moving Beyond Manual Testing: Full Session

The biggest problems most companies new to automation experience come down to unrealistic expectations and poor up front planning. QA Automation in its current form is a fantastic and useful addition to the traditional SDLC and QA practices.

However, it has to be made clear that it is impossible to automate 100% of all testing. While a lot of people will see immediate cost benefits to automation and set full coverage as a goal, they will quickly realize that the cost of maintenance becomes too high in an agile world. For automation to be successful there has to be careful planning with regards to what is appropriate to automate, how to create and maintain tests with a verify defined set of standards, and how manual testing efforts and automation can work together, not in opposition.