Many organizations never achieve the significant benefits that are promised from automated test execution. Surprisingly often, this is not due to technical factors but to management issues. Dot Graham describes the most important management issues you must address for test automation success, and helps you understand and choose the best approaches for your organization—no matter which automation tools you use or your current state of automation. Dot explains how automation affects staffing, who should be responsible for which automation tasks, how managers can best support automation efforts leading to success, and what return on investment means in automated testing and what you can realistically expect. Dot also reviews the key technical issues that can make or break the automation effort. Come away with an example set of automation objectives and measures, and a draft test automation strategy that you can use to plan or improve your own automation.
Dorothy Graham
In software testing for forty years, Dorothy Graham is coauthor of four books—Software Inspection, Software Test Automation, Foundations of Software Testing and Experiences of Test Automation—and is currently working with Seretta Gamba on a new book on test automation patterns. A popular and entertaining speaker at conferences and seminars worldwide, Dot has attended STAR conferences since the first one in 1992. She was a founding member of the ISEB Software Testing Board and a member of the working party that developed the ISTQB Foundation Syllabus. Dot was awarded the European Excellence Award in Software Testing in 1999 and the first ISTQB Excellence Award in 2012. Learn more about Dot at DorothyGraham.co.uk.
Automating system level test execution can result in many problems. It is surprising to find that many people encounter the same problems, yet they are not aware of common solutions that have worked well for others. These problem/solution pairs are called “patterns.” Seretta Gamba recognized the commonality of these test automation issues and their solutions and, together with Dorothy Graham, has organized them into Test Automation Patterns. Although unit test patterns are well known, Seretta and Dorothy’s patterns address more general issues. They cover management, process, design, and execution patterns to help you recognize common test automation issues and show you how to identify appropriate patterns to solve the problems. Issues such as No Previous Automation, High ROI Expectations, and High Test Maintenance Cost are addressed by patterns such as Maintainable Testware, Tool Independence, and Management Support. Laptop required (with USB access). An offline version of the wiki will be available to copy to your laptop from a USB stick to use during the session.