How the work divides.
WHAT MANUAL TESTING PROVIDES
Judgement Discovery Assessment of experience Investigation of the unexpected
WHAT AUTOMATION PROVIDES
Repetition Speed Consistency Coverage of regression
WHAT THE RELATIONSHIP SHOULD BE
Automation handling repetition, freeing people for investigation.
WHAT IT SHOULD NOT BE
Automation replacing thought.
WHY MANUAL TESTING IS NOT DISAPPEARING
Judgement cannot be automated, and new behaviour must be understood before it can be scripted.
WHAT TEST AUTOMATION ENGINEERING INVOLVES
Building and maintaining frameworks Writing reliable tests Integrating with pipelines Diagnosing failures
WHAT MAKES IT SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
The same practices apply: structure, review, refactoring.
WHAT HAPPENS WITHOUT THEM
A suite nobody can maintain, which is eventually abandoned.
WHAT TO AVOID
Automating everything and testing nothing Treating automation as a project that finishes Separate teams writing tests for code they did not build
WHY THAT LAST POINT
Tests written without understanding the code verify the wrong things.
WHAT TO PREFER
Developers and testers both writing tests, at appropriate levels.
