Ask Me Anything - The Future of Test Automation

Talk Description

We were joined by Alan Page who answered the following questions and provided lots of insight into his future vision of Test Automation.

• What do you say to testers and quality folk that really do not want to learn automation (snarky and non-snarky answers please!)
• In the future, will a small group of Modern Testers coach developers who do all the automation?
• What books/resources would you recommend for a new Lean advocate?
• What are the TOP THREE skills a QA needs to future-proof their careers?
• What do you see as the drawbacks to developers owning testing, and what are some strategies to minimise those drawbacks?
• How do you achieve balanced automation coverage across the stack when it involves coordination among Backend, Frontend, SDETs, etc? Who keeps the big picture in mind?
• I thought that record & playback tools are more useful for testers unfamiliar with writing code. Please expand on why developers might choose to use these tools?
• Where can you see exploratory testing in Modern Testing? Who should do that?
• Why is test automation so desirable for companies looking for new QA staff?
• What would be your advice when introducing a modern testing approach to dev/QA organisations?
• Do you think the future is leaning towards coded automated tests or using UI-heavy automated testing tools that are easy to pick up for non-coders?
• How do we make sure the future of test automation goes beyond correctness and addresses a broad range of quality aspects?

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Alan Page

VP, Engineering

Alan has worked at Microsoft, Unity, and NBC Universal. Currently he's focusing on leadership coaching, and fractional/consulting leadership roles.

Alan was the lead author of the book “How We Test Software at Microsoft”, contributed chapters for “Beautiful Testing”, and “Experiences of Test Automation, and wrote a collection of essays called “The A Word: Under the Covers of Test Automation”.