On the test automation pyramid (again), opposing views and TestBash Manchester

This post was published on October 25, 2017

Short blog post this time, since I’m smack in the middle of three projects while also preparing for my talk at TestBash Manchester, some training stuff and reviewing a book. It can’t always be long form!

With this blog post, I’d like to draw your attention to episode #31 of the Test and Code podcast, where Brian Okken (the host) replayed parts of the recordings of him being on another podcast, hosted by Paul Merrill. Paul’s a great guy and someone whose opinions and view I hold in high esteem, so I knew this was about to be good. In the interviel Paul and Brian did, they shared and discussed their opposing views on the test automation pyramid. By the way, more news about a collaboration (of sorts) between Paul and myself to follow soon!

It seems like Paul roughly shares my own views on the pyramid (read this recent blog post to see what I think of it and how I still use it, whereas Brian thinks the pyramid is falsely promoting the fact that unit tests are the most important tests you can write. Instead, in the recording, he advocates that there’s no value in software until it’s useful to an end user (be it a human being or another system) and that therefore UI tests are the most important and should be treated that way. I deliberately didn’t use the word ‘graphical’ here, by the way, since Brian talks mostly about writing tests for software where the GUI isn’t the interface that’s most extensively used.

You can listen to the podcast episode here. I thought it refreshing to listen to someone that has such an alternative view on a well-worn concept such as the test automation pyramid. Even though my own opinions on the model and its use remain unchanged (for now), I’ll try and make it a habit to listen to other voices and opposing views more often, rather than staying in my comfort zone and listening to podcasts and reading blogs on topics I’m already familiar with. Who knows I might learn a thing or two!

On another note, as I said before, I’m quite busy putting the finishing touches to my upcoming TestBash Manchester talk, and it’s both a talk and an event I’m very, very excited about. To those of you with Ministry of Testing Dojo Pro accounts, my talk will be available shortly after the event. For those of you that haven’t got such an account, you’ll have to wait for next week’s blog post, which will highly likely be a review of the event.

See you next week!

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