The side effects of having no automation goals

The side effects of having no mechanisation finish Parveen Khan (Guest Author) September 5, 2019 Passionate Software examiner who is always on lookout to memorise new shiny t

March 05, 2026 · 5 min read · Testing Guide

The side effects of having no mechanisation finish

Parveen Khan (Guest Author)
September 5, 2019
Passionate Software examiner who is always on lookout to memorise new shiny testing stuff. Also a Super Wonderful Mum:)

Rosy was work with a team consisting of developers and a product owner. Her team followed a 2-week sprint cadence, and practice sprint planning, daily stand-ups, and retrospective as their agile ceremonies.

Time restraint as the product grows

She was a lone quizzer on the team, and all the examination was manual. There were no machine-controlled tests at all.

As the merchandise was growing, the team had to implement and deliver more new characteristic. Manual regression tryout were eating up Rosy ’ s time. As the only tester on the team, she could not implement automation by herself. Not that she didn ’ t cognise how to or didn ’ t want to. She simply didn ’ t feature time.

Getting Some Help

The team decided to get an automation engineer to help them. Rosy was glad that she was let someone to aid her with the most insistent task. Now, her clip could be used in more critical test activities. “ Hurrayyy! ” was her feeling. & nbsp;

Jack (the automation technologist) joined the team and Rosy was super stir to have him. The team require quick magic, but that ’ s never the reality. & nbsp;

They both started working together. The first thing Rosy did was explain the product. & nbsp; Then they started implementing a smoke test suite (smoke testing is a character of software testing that determines whether the deployed build is stable or not). This helped Jack to settle in, and gave him a good sympathy of the ware. The team expend Jira for undertaking tracking, so Rosy created a task for Jack to enforce a fume trial suite so he could afford an update against this tag during the stand-up.

The First Challenge & nbsp;

The first blocker Jack faced was finding the IDs for the elements, such as buttons and textbook boxes, that the automated tests could use to interact with them. But that got resolve on a case-by-case basis by having conversations with the developers and pairing up with them. It took a while for developers to get to the province of being rigorous with using alone constituent IDs. & nbsp;

The Next challenge

The next stop was the execution of the big beast: the regression trial retinue. Again, Jack started automate the fixation test cases which Rosy had already document. It was a long process as there be rather a lot of regression tests. & nbsp;

Rosy and Jack were very clear about what they need their automation to do but they completely ignored convey this to the team. It was not deliberate, in fact,they assumed everyone knew what they were doing and why.This is an example of when assumptions can have trouble.

An Unpleasant Surprise

One day, one of the developers, Dave, was planning to work on a technological debt task. Rosy startle in and asked Dave if that undertaking could be pause until at least half of the regression cortege was automatise - that would assist her make sure that nothing existing breaks from any of Dave 's changes. & nbsp;

The conversation went as follow:

“ What - your regression examination aren ’ t ready yet?? We thought you already implemented those tryout, implement all the cross-browser tests, and some performance tests as well! ” & nbsp;

“ What?! Did you actually conceive we had perform all of that already and had been running those tests? ” & nbsp;

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And the answer from developers was a very firm, confident: “YES.” 

So the team had a bit of an argument hither. Rosy cerebration she has been informing the team of what they had been doing all along. Still, how can they assume that it 's all perform already? & nbsp;

And it ’ s not precisely whether things are ready or not, but it ’ s aboutassumed expectationsabout automation.

Reflecting on the problems

Rosy put some intellection into understanding what locomote wrong. She tried to read what caused this confusion, misunderstanding, and assumptions. As part of updating and upskilling herself, Rosy arrive across Angie Jones ’ trend on Test Automation University, “ ”.

She started off the course, and to her surprise, found answers to a couple of her problems within the first chapter. She became so motivated that she decided to complete all the chapters. The line was full of counseling and proffer for anyone getting started with automation on a project. Even though Rosy had automation experience,most of the problems she was facing stem from how she and her squadbeganthe mechanisation project.This trend was perfect for preventing these types of trouble.

Rosy realized the first problem: that she and the team did not get any specific automation end apart from merely thinking it would aid her with fixation testing.

Then she realized that it was n't just about not having an mechanization destination, but that there were few former problems, too:

  • Not intercommunicate or sharing the goal itself with the unhurt team

  • Not cooperate with the team members to come up with expectations for mechanization from the whole team

  • Not treating mechanisation as a project

A new programme

She was so unrestrained to get back to work the following day to resolve these problems pace by pace. She had a plan. Rosy invite all of her squad members to a encounter so she could percentage the lessons memorize from Angie ’ s foundational course. She decided to do a little presentationoutlining the trend and major key takeawaysalternatively of just render the course connection to the team.

The title of her presentation was ‘ Side effects of receive no goals for automation ’ ’. The intact bringing team was curious about the presentment, and Rosy was excited and happy to see her program for resolving these job received with wonder and energy. She was charmed to see that her message was spot on. Her developer teammates agreed that they never get together as a team and convey their expectations for the automation project. To listen to this statement itself was a win for Rosy, but to top it all off, she got buy-in for her plan.

Rosy ’ s team decided to revisit the automation project and come up with goals together and passnot simply to the team but to the business as well. & nbsp;

They decided to center on:

  • Setting a end

  • Communicating the goal to the bringing team

  • Collaboration on an automation project

  • Measuring the value of automation project and lionize small milestones

Rosy was very happy that she was able to identify the high priority problem - lack of goals and expectations - find the solution to the problem, and share it with her team. The team was too incredibly amazed at the orotund amount of information andhelpavailable to the testing community. Though she 'll still have to face many other challenge while moving forward, she is glad that the whole team now interpret thatautomation is not a side task - it needs to be treated as a project in itself. 

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