Jenny Brambl
e
@jennydoesthing
s
Director of Quality Engineerin
g
Papa
The Soft Skills o
f
Automation
Slide 2
Slide 2 text
Hi, I’m Jenny
!
Director of Quality Engineering, Pap
a
My pronouns are she/her
.
@jennydoesthings
Slide 3
Slide 3 text
The Plan
Expectation
s
Human/Machine Work Scal
e
Code Awareness Scal
e
Types of Automatio
n
Frameworks
Part one: Automation is…
@jennydoesthings
Slide 4
Slide 4 text
The Plan
Can this be automated
?
Should this be automated
?
How do we automate this?
Part two: Soft Skills of Automation
@jennydoesthings
Slide 5
Slide 5 text
I am and have been many things
.
Mushroom seller, tester, speaker,
goth, manager, troublemaker
…
But not a developer.
@jennydoesthings
Slide 6
Slide 6 text
Part one
:
Automation is…
@jennydoesthings
Slide 7
Slide 7 text
Expectations
Find your place in the world
.
Gain a deeper understanding of
automation
.
Start practicing automation-first
mindsets
.
We’re not gonna code today.
@jennydoesthings
Slide 8
Slide 8 text
Expectations
What do you want?
@jennydoesthings
Slide 9
Slide 9 text
Expectations
Respect the manual tester
.
You know so much
.
Everything in your career has
lead you here.
@jennydoesthings
Slide 10
Slide 10 text
What do you think
Automation is?
@jennydoesthings
Slide 11
Slide 11 text
Automation is testing
in which machines
do most of the work.
@jennydoesthings
Slide 12
Slide 12 text
Automation is..
UI test
s
Unit test
s
Integration test
s
Security scan
s
Low code/no code tool
s
Scripts
@jennydoesthings
Slide 13
Slide 13 text
This is a spectrum,
not a binary.
@jennydoesthings
Slide 14
Slide 14 text
I call this the
Human/Machine
Work Scale.
@jennydoesthings
Slide 15
Slide 15 text
@jennydoesthings
Humans
do most
of the
work
Machines
do most
of the
work
Human/Machine Work Scale
Slide 16
Slide 16 text
@jennydoesthings
Humans
do most
of the
work
Machines
do most
of the
work
Human/Machine Work Scale
Unit
tests
Explora
-
tory
testing
Access
-
ibility
testing
API
testing
Load
testing
Pen
testing
CI/
CD
Manual
testing
Slide 17
Slide 17 text
@jennydoesthings
Humans
do most
of the
work
Machines
do most
of the
work
Human/Machine Work Scale
So, where are you?
Slide 18
Slide 18 text
The future sees us
moving towards more
machine-assisted
testing.
@jennydoesthings
Slide 19
Slide 19 text
Our next concept
is the Code
Awareness Scale.
@jennydoesthings
Slide 20
Slide 20 text
@jennydoesthings
No
knowledge
of code
Full
knowledge
of code
Code Awareness Scale
Slide 21
Slide 21 text
@jennydoesthings
No
knowledge
of code
Full
knowledge
of code
Code Awareness Scale
Unit
testing
Black
box
testing
Slide 22
Slide 22 text
@jennydoesthings
No
knowledge
of code
Full
knowledge
of code
Code Awareness Scale
Unit
testing
Black
box
testing
Slide 23
Slide 23 text
@jennydoesthings
No
knowledge
of code
Full
knowledge
of code
Code Awareness Scale
API
tests
Gherkin
or
cucumber
Access
-
ibility
Testing
refactors
UI
tests
Unit
testing
Black
box
testing
Slide 24
Slide 24 text
@jennydoesthings
No
knowledge
of code
Full
knowledge
of code
Code Awareness Scale
So, where are you?
Slide 25
Slide 25 text
The more comfortable
we are with the code, the
better prepared we are to
test the code.
@jennydoesthings
Slide 26
Slide 26 text
Moving towards being
more code-aware
Learn to code…or at least read
code
.
Learn the SDLC at your company
.
Learn Git or other versioning
.
Get deep into logs and analytics
.
Review unit tests.
@jennydoesthings
Slide 27
Slide 27 text
If you are already deeply
code aware, you may
want to work on skills
that are less code aware.
@jennydoesthings
Slide 28
Slide 28 text
Moving towards being
less code-aware
Practice strict exploratory testing with
charter
s
Run a bug bas
h
Review manual test case
s
Get involved in UAT or accessibility
testin
g
Teach someone else to use the app
@jennydoesthings
Slide 29
Slide 29 text
Part two
:
Soft Skills
@jennydoesthings
Slide 30
Slide 30 text
Principles of Automation
• Test design emphasizes reliability,
value, and speed
.
• Collaboration determines what types
of tests to write
.
• Features must be written to be
testable
.
• Code reviews are for everyone
.
• Automation code is production code.
@jennydoesthings
Slide 31
Slide 31 text
What are your goals?
• Fulfilling a personal goal or
professional growt
h
• Getting regression down from 8
hour
s
• Increase confidence in our release
s
• Prevent show stopper bug
s
• Support the team in working better
together
@jennydoesthings
Slide 32
Slide 32 text
Can this be automated?
• What are the inputs to the
system
?
• What variables act on the
system
?
• What data do we need
?
• Is it written in a testable way?
@jennydoesthings
Slide 33
Slide 33 text
https://www.saucedemo.com/
@jennydoesthings
Slide 34
Slide 34 text
This was a very
simple example.
@jennydoesthings
Slide 35
Slide 35 text
Sometimes,
this is a guess.
@jennydoesthings
Slide 36
Slide 36 text
Can this be automated?
• Think about if the UI changes
dramatically between runs
.
• Are there elements that are hard
to automate
?
• Can we tell if it breaks
?
• Is it valuable?
@jennydoesthings
Slide 37
Slide 37 text
Should this feature
be automated?
@jennydoesthings
Slide 38
Slide 38 text
Should this be automated?
• What’s already automated
?
• Is this a good candidate for
automation
?
• Is this a good candidate for
another type of automation
?
• Do we have time and resources?
@jennydoesthings
Slide 39
Slide 39 text
@jennydoesthings
Unit tests can hit all the logical
branching in your code and
confirm that given inputs return
expected outputs. They can’t
speak to the interactions between
unrelated code paths or inputs, but
in isolation, they tell us a certain
unit of code works like we intend.
@iamsellek
Other types of automation
Slide 40
Slide 40 text
https://www.saucedemo.com/
@jennydoesthings
Slide 41
Slide 41 text
What does
automating this
look like?
@jennydoesthings
Slide 42
Slide 42 text
What does automating
this look like?
• What elements do we need to
interact with
?
• What steps does a computer
need to take beyond what a
human does
?
• What data does the test need
?
• What setup does the test need?
@jennydoesthings
Next Steps
• Set a goal to create automation-ready
implementations
.
• Write pseudo code and have it
reviewed by other testers
.
• Earmark test cases for automation
(include reasoning!
)
• Start learning (shout out to TAU!
)
• Pair with developers
.
• Start looking at unit tests.
@jennydoesthings
Slide 48
Slide 48 text
Any questions?
@jennydoesthings
Slide 49
Slide 49 text
Find me online!
jenny.bramble@gmail.com
http://twitter.com/jennydoesthings
https://linkedin.com/in/jennybramble
http://jennydoesthings.com
Papa!
Slide 50
Slide 50 text
Credits
This is where you give credit to the ones who are part of this project
.
● Presentation template by Slidesgo
● Icons by Flaticon
● Infographics by Freepik
● Images created Freepi
k
● Author introduction slide photo created by Freepi
k
● Text & Image slide photo created by Freepik.com