We’ve all seen sci-fi movies where robots take over the world, that is until Will Smith (or similar) steps in at the eleventh hour and saves the day. But like a lot of movies made, they do have a good knack of portraying what the future might hold, whether that’ll be a home robot for doing the daily chores to an all singing all dancing fully autonomous home.

Even today, in the modern world of DevOps, I see this all too often in automated test code for regression tests:

Where is the Value?
As we know, we cannot test everything. This is especially true for End to End testing. This activity is often carried out at the end of the Implementation phase after System testing has completed. There will be many paths through the software and to test them all will be a large task. So only critical paths are tested through the system that provides an acceptable level of test coverage. Add automation into the mix, and this can become extremely challenging at the end of the delivery cycle. Teams often accept that the effort required for automating the End to End tests is too much of a risk to a timely delivery. Often, it is cut down to small manual End to End tests as an afterthought that adds little value to the overall quality or post-release teams. Ironically, this is where it adds the most value!

Ever heard the expression ‘More speed, less haste’? Acting too quickly and without due diligence, focus and attention to detail will result in avoidable mistakes and thus require even more time to complete the task satisfactorily.