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Are You Treating Your Testers Like Robots

Tuesday, January 10, 2017
automation
exploratory testing
pet peeve
testing
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WHY DO people try to make humans do a task that is better suited to computers... WHY DO people try to make computers do a job better suited to humans!

Imagine you have a website that you have to test with 5 different web browsers, various logins and passwords. Now you have to do the same thing hundreds of times, every time you release a new version, every 2 weeks. Some people write test scripts and give them to their testers and make them carry them out step by step, click by click. It sounds like a modern-day assembly line, perhaps something out of Fritz-Lang's Metropolis. This is the job for a computer.

Conversely, if you have to test a complex web site that is changing every 2 weeks, with lots of new screens, many areas to explore and requirements and specs that are still evolving, some people try and automate the testing of this application. They spend a week writing a test that would only take a human a few hours to test. They miss all of the important edge cases, dead-ends, usability issues and items that a computer cannot spot. This is the job for a skilled human tester.

The moral of the story - automate the repetitive tasks so that your human testers are more efficient, don't try and turn your humans into machines or your machines into humans.
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2 Replies
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
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re: inflectra.david Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Let us know if you agree, disagree or have thoughts!?
Wednesday, October 25, 2017
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re: inflectra.david Tuesday, January 10, 2017

I agree with this 100%. I am currently in a situation where management is gung ho on automating testing and we are still deciding functionality. This is a startup that will no doubt change paths many times in the next 6 months. Since I'm merely a pion, I will do what's asked, and hopefully, it won't waste too much money. I tried to explain why we should wait but they seem to "know" more than the person that has been doing this for well over 15 years. 
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  • Last Reply: Wednesday, October 25, 2017
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