{"id":917,"date":"2015-05-26T09:53:38","date_gmt":"2015-05-26T16:53:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/?p=917"},"modified":"2015-05-26T09:53:39","modified_gmt":"2015-05-26T16:53:39","slug":"sigh-automationagain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/sigh-automationagain\/","title":{"rendered":"<sigh> Automation…again"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think this is the first time I\u2019ve blogged about automation since writing\u2026or, to be fair, compiling The A Word<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But yet again, I see questions among testers about the value of automation and whether it will replace testers, etc.. For example, this post<\/a> from Josh Grant asks whether there are similarities between automated trucking and automated testing. Of course, I think most testers will go on (and on) about how much brainpower and critical thinking software testing needs, and how test automation can never replace \u201creal testing\u201d. They\u2019re right, of course, but there\u2019s more to the story.<\/p>\n

Software testing isn\u2019t at all unique among professions requiring brain power, creativity, or critical thinking. I challenged  you to bingoogle \u201cKnowledge Work\u201d or Knowledge Worker\u201d, and not see the parallels to software testing in other professions. You know what? Some legal practices can be replaced by automation or by low-cost outsourcing \u2013 yet I couldn\u2019t find any articles, blogs, or anything else from lawyers complaining about automation or outsourcing taking away their jobs (disclaimer \u2013 I only looked at the first two pages of results on simple searches). Apparently, however, there are \u201cmanagers\u201d (1000\u2019s of them if I\u2019m extrapolating correctly) who claim that test automation is a process for replacing human testers. Apparently, these managers don\u2019t spend any time on the internet, because I could only find second hand confirmation of their existence.<\/p>\n

At risk of repeating myself (or re-repeating myself\u2026) you should automate the stuff that humans don\u2019t want (or shouldn\u2019t have) to do. Automate the process of adding and deleting 100,000 records; but use your brain to walk through a user workflow. Stop worrying about automation as a replacement for testing, but don\u2019t\u2019 ignore the value it gives you for accomplishing the complex and mundane.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think this is the first time I\u2019ve blogged about automation since writing\u2026or, to be fair, compiling The A Word. But yet again, I see questions among testers about the value of automation and whether it will replace testers, etc.. For example, this post from Josh Grant asks whether there are similarities between automated trucking…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}