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 been improving software quality since 1993 and currently leads an organization that includes software infrastructure, tools, documentation, and quality coaching. Previous to Unity, Alan spent 22 years at Microsoft working on projects spanning the company – including a two-year position as Microsoft’s Director of Test Excellence. Alan was the lead author of the book “How We Test Software at Microsoft”, contributed chapters for “Beautiful Testing”, and “Experiences of Test Automation: Case Studies of Software Test Automation”. His latest ebook (which may or may not be updated soon) is a collection of essays on test automation called “The A Word: Under the Covers of Test Automation”, and is available on leanpub .