On where I think the test automation industry is going
This post was published on October 11, 2017One of the funny things about running a blog for a while is that people start to see you as an expert. Whether or not this is a reasonable observation in my case, I’ll leave to answer for the rest of you. Still, they’ll turn to you with questions regarding their career, advice on that, and if I know where the industry is going. I won’t disclose my answers to the former here, since there’s no such thing as general career advice and I don’t feel comfortable sharing questions and answers asked by individuals on a public blog.
In this post, I’ll share a couple of things that tend to make up my replies to the question of ‘where is the industry going?’. You’ll see that hidden in there is some career advice anyway..
The need for good automation will keep growing
This is the answer to a question I get sometimes, and one I’ve been asking myself quite often as well. Is test automation a good field to be in for the foreseeable future? I tend to think that it is. Sure, the field will change due to new technologies, market trends and research breakthroughs, but in general, test automation will remain an important (though I don’t want to overstate the importance of it either) activity in software development. That is, good automation. Hopefully the industry will start to learn that there is a lot of horrible automation being written and maintained at the moment, and will see that we’ll all be better off if the plug is pulled on those efforts. I’ve seen some things.. I don’t even want to know how much money is wasted in these projects!
People that want to be good automation engineers will see that they need software development skills
As a logical follow-up to the previous point, I foresee that the industry will start to recognize that in order to write good automation, one needs actual software development skills. I expect (or at least sincerely hope) that the end of creating automation that is hard to use, explain and maintain is nigh. I myself will do my very best to create this awareness, even if that means standing on some people’s toes. It’s about time test automation is taken seriously, by all parties involved. So, for those that want to move into the automation field, make sure you’ve at least got a grasp of the basic concepts of software design and development. You’ll need it to succeed in the long term.
Automation turns out not to be the silver bullet
Repeat after me: automation is not the silver bullet. Sure, it can make things more effective if applied well. But if you automate horse shit, you’ll get automated horse shit. Just automating something because you can (or because someone asks you to, for those with less backbone or less ability to think critically) does not mean that you should. Again, I see more and more people starting to become aware of this, mostly due to others that have seen the truth earlier and are willing (or feeling obliged) to share. Thanks guys, keep up the great work!
Machine learning and artificial intelligence will not take your job
Sure, ML and AI are emerging trends. And sure, they might have an effect on your job and the way you do it at some point in time. But I refuse to believe that at least in the foreseeable future, ML and AI are going to replace me. Maybe they’ll replace some of my tasks. Writing yet another Page Object and tests that use it (in a valuable way!), for example. And you know what? I’d be happy if they did. It gets boring, after a while. This means that some of my time will be freed up to dedicate to more interesting stuff, such as teaching others, doing research, devising and implementing automation strategies, or becoming the world expert on tiramisù I always wanted to be. I’m looking forward to it.
Despite numerous efforts, the software industry will not be able to get rid of testers
Lastly, and I hope this is the last time I ever need to refer to this fallacy (although I suspect it won’t be), those pesky testers will live to see another day.