The Lived Reality: The Automation Silos

Perhaps one thing that I feel isn't spoken enough about, briefly mentioned in Barry's session at Leading With Quality, are the silos that test automation can bring.

It can happen for many reasons, but one thing that springs to mind is that when we live in a silo and are focused on our own specific roles, we can forget about whether our own work is having the impact it needs. Whether it is helping the business. Whether our work actually moves the needle.

Test Automation can often be sold as a saviour, but it is also at huge risk of living in a silo. Plodding along, looking like it brings value, showign green or red, or something in between, needing to spend a huge chunk of time on maintenance and often increasing automation without purpose.

This happens in the lived reality, probably more than we like to think. It's harder to talk about how things don't work, we often hear the stories of how they do work.

This applies to test automation as much as other areas, and the point is really to question the value of the work, is it worth the money and investment? Could time and money be better spent elsewhere?