Driving Lessons for Test AutomatorsMartedì 4 Giugno

Contrary to what some managers believe, and some vendors want you to believe, test automation is not done by just procuring a tool and telling people to start coding! In the beginning one usually concentrates on automating as many test cases as possible and doesn’t really ‘waste time’ to define a strategy to render those automated tests also maintainable, scalable, repeatable and so on. Also, testers usually automate test cases just as they performed them manually. In agile, on the other hand, there is often the danger that different teams do test automation independently and don’t notice that each, in his own way, is inventing the same wheel!

Using intuitive exercises, I intend to demonstrate what happens in such cases. Of course, getting to know what kind of problems can come up, is just half the battle, so at this point I will introduce the Test Automation Patterns Wiki, a collection of expert solutions to most of the current automation issues. With a new batch of exercises participants will learn how to navigate and use the wiki to solve some of the problems discovered with the first exercises. Finally, together we will look up the most important patterns along with some of special interest to the participants. In this tutorial testers will not learn to code, but they will learn what distinguishes an excellent test automator from just one more test automator. Developers, on the other hand, will notice that knowing how to code is no guarantee for good test automation. Covered Patterns:

• WHOLE TEAM APPROACH

• MAINTAINABLE TESTWARE

• GOOD PROGRAMMING PRACTICES

• ABSTRACTION LEVELS

• DESIGN FOR REUSE

• INDEPENDENT TEST CASES

• FAIL GRACEFULLY

• ONE CLEAR PURPOSE

• TESTWARE ARCHITECTURE

• TOOL INDEPENDENCE

• OBJECT MAP

• And more

The day after

Participants will have a good idea of what is really important for an efficient and long-lived test automation. Knowing how to navigate and use the test automation patterns wiki will give them a tool that they, and their team, can use again and again