Automation testing for everything? Is it a good idea?
If you are in the field of QA testing, you are probably facing this question everyday, either by your peers or your managers. Should you automate all of the testing? Let's start with a brief history of software testing. Back in 1999, James Bach wrote the famous article "Automation Snake Oil". Even though the article was written nearly 20 years ago , we still see the same problems, which in many cases increased due to the principles of Agile and Continuous deployment. The aspect of saving time and cost in testing is so seducing that companies strive to think that test automation will replace the thinking people (a.k.a manual testers). What IT professionals and IT managers tend to forget is why the automation tools were created in the first place! Automation testing is just an enabler, it is a tool, to help the testers in their work, and to reduce the risks of faulty software. The automation test evangelists, as I call them, fail to understan