A Beginner’s Guide to Test Automation - Angela Riggs

Talk Description

Automation! It may be a buzzword these days, but it’s also a useful approach to include in your testing and quality toolkit. If you’re new to automated testing, you’re probably starting off with a lot of questions: Which tool or framework should you use? How do you know which tests to automate? Why is automated testing useful for you and your team? The options for automated testing are wide open, and you may feel overwhelmed when you’re first getting started. 

I want to help turn some of your unknown unknowns into known unknowns! The goal of automation is to create anti-fragile tests that are easy to understand, maintain, and handoff. I’ll help you get closer to that goal by answering some of the questions that I had to tackle when I first started with automated testing, and also give you some other questions to think about for your own needs:

Takeaways:

• What’s important to consider - and what isn’t - when you’re choosing a tool or framework
• How to decide which tests to automate, and why
• Best practices for actually writing the tests, like separation of concerns and useful failure messages

Your own needs may differ, but being able to set a solid foundation for automated testing is useful for everyone. I hope you’ll come away from this talk feeling confident that you know how to get started with automated testing, and better prepared when your challenges do come along! 

By the end of this session, you'll be able to:

Angela Riggs

QA Manager

As a QA engineer, Angela’s work has ranged from feature testing to leading department-wide process changes. She believes that empathy and curiosity are driving forces of quality, and uses both to advocate for users and engineering teams. Outside of work, she enjoys exploring the aisles of Powell’s and the forests of the PNW. She has an enthusiasm for karaoke, and serious debates about what can truly be categorized as a sandwich.