The past, present and future of Automation
Wale Olaleye
Rails Fever
How long have people been automating?
Is there anything we can learn from the history of
automation?
Horse and buggy
1888 German Flocken ElektrowagenFirst electric car of the world
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_automobile#mediaviewer/File:1888_Flocken_Elektrowagen.jpg
Texting
Crash
Google car
Bell System Telephone Switchboard
Almon Strowger Undertaker turned Inventor
Common Pattern?• Human interaction was completely
eliminated.
• This expectation from automation is locked in human psyche.
• Does this happen with Test Automation?
Test Automation Myths
• Reduces work for QA
• Can replace human testers
Truth
• TA increases the tester's reach
• TA generates new types of work
• Maintenance
• Debugging
• Coding
• Result Analysis
How history helps• Explains Management Disconnect
• QA resistance
• Developer resistance
• We need to keep helping managers, QA, Devs adjust their thinking
• Make sure your team is automating for the right reason (end of year goal?)
• Highest quality of testing is done manually, by humans
• Humans are limited by physical constraints and cannot test everything
• We need both automated and manual testing.
• The industry is making us extremists! (100% automation)
Future of Automated Testing
• TDD is here
• DevOps is rising
• Expand to become an automation generalist
Keep Learning • Dynamic Languages (Ruby, Python,
JavaScript)
• Vagrant
• Open Stack
• Docker
• Amazon Web Services
• Orchestration (Chef, Puppet, Salt, Ansible)
Conclusion• Learn from the past
• Improve the present
• Plan for the future
Questions?
References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_automobile#mediaviewer/File:1888_Flocken_Elektrowagen.jpghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_and_buggy#mediaviewer/File:Horse_and_buggy.jpghttp://imgick.nj.com/home/njo-media/width620/img/business_impact/photo/15136315-mmmain.jpghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_switchboard#mediaviewer/File:Photograph_of_Women_Working_at_a_Bell_System_Telephone_Switchboard_(3660047829).jpghttp://www.robinsonlibrary.com/technology/electrical/telecommunication/graphics/switch.jpghttp://www.robinsonlibrary.com/technology/electrical/telecommunication/strowger.htmhttp://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2010/01/31/carcrash.jpghttp://www.godrivemag.com/downloads/151/download/texting-while-driving-little-girl.gif
