I preferred to write blog “Automation alarm”; As Automation Vs. Manual job is a very buzzing topic nowadays in media and of course at Tea stalls outside the companies, inside the conference rooms, while looking for job change etc.
With regards to this, few questions started popping up in my mind.
Did automation start today?
Is automation possible everywhere?
Is automation cost-effective?
Are people working in industry equipped with automation skills?
Or Is the media creating hype?
If someone asks me about when automation started, Answer is not before the Manual process! It is inherited from Manual process to achieve level of accuracy, speeding up certain activities where repetition is involved and not limited to this only, then why today, we are so much bothered about Automation? Are we lazy?.. No .. Then why? Competition, Time to market, Cost cutting (This particular might not be always true) and sometimes to perform complex activities.
Manual process will always be the base for Automation. You cannot start automating any activity without knowing the manual process to do the same.
Automation is not possible everywhere? Rather, I would say It is not advisable everywhere. Why? Because machine could not replace Human everywhere, Machine cannot guess/ take action against the things which programmer does not thought while creating it (Exception is: Machine with Artificial Intelligence), So we cannot totally rely on Automation.
Automation is only feasible and useful where the things will continue to repeat for longer period of time. It is not useful, if time to automate and Return on its investment will not be achieved.
I think I talked so much negative about the Automation, but these are the facts.
Still, do we need to adapt/learn Automation? Yes, we should because though it is not suitable everywhere same is the case with manual process, So, in future or from now itself industry will welcome the individual who is having both Manual and Automation skills. Both skills will be having same importance.
I hope you like reading this blog.
Click here to Subscribe to this blog and to read upcoming blogs.
Happy reading and learning!
Pingback: Automation alarm!!!!!!!! – Testing Professionals
I’ve been in testing field since 1998…as we know in the past we had clearly separated QA professionals who were doing automation with tools like QTP and professionals who did mostly manual testing.
As a contractor I tried to jump on one position that was purely automation, and I had trouble because i haven’t used it for a while and developing framework from scratch it required good programming knowledge, recent use of the tool etc. And at that time QTP was mostly used tool with VB so my knowledge would have been enough if i knew this combo.
But nowadays, with Agile and usage of open source tools like Selenium, that can use multiple languages like Java, Python, C#, Perl employers demand knowledge of multiple languages with automation.
Now tell me, to know all these, you clearly need to be a developer, isn’t it? If i learn all these languages, why I would then work in test automation field? This is ridiculous….
And as you mentioned, automation cannot replace everything….Sometimes you need to do some very simple test that you might not need to repeat in the future…so you wouldn’t necessarily automate that.
Also, in one company, we used to have hundreds of automated test cases failed because somewhere in the middle, there was a broken thing, and all hundred tests would fail because you can’t really handle every single point, every single possibility where test could fail, and this would raise false alarm with management…
Plus, there’s exploratory testing…until we get artificial intelligent, we’ll still need some manual testers doing it.
Also, good manual tester has different mind set from developer….it always thinks about breaking things, trying crazy things, he/she wants things to fail, while being developer is completely opposite….
Just my 2 cents.
Cheers,
Mike
Hi Mike,
Thanks for Sharing your views.
My thoughts on your views.
1. Expectation from manual tester to design framework is wrong in initial days. That progression activity from manual testing to Automation testing should be a gradual. First start with creation of small scripts, then move towards the complex things.
2. Thought process and goal of Developer and Tester is way different. We cannot replace Tester with Developer and vice versa.
I would say
“Developer cannot be the good Tester, but he can write good scripts”
“Automation Tester should be a good Manual tester as well as should have good knowledge of Programming language”
Thanks,
Swapnil
Good Start. Stupendous ! When I went through about “Automation Alarm” Name suggest that Alarm is a Wake up call to Hop for the trending technology. Am looking for articles related to Framework. Try to Bring in more. Keep it up.
Thanks..sure.
A very clear written and useful article. Looking forward for some more articles.
Kudos! To the new venture.
Thanks..sure I will try to publish some more good articles.
Good thoughts Swapnil, another very important point which we miss to calculate is readiness for automation. In working in Agile mode we sometimes start automation without out taking into account the readiness factor and which leads to loss of time.
Thanks Kedar….I agree with your point..Yup In turn it leads to loss of efforts.
Good to see you’ve chosen a trending topic for your blog.
Thanks Saurabh..
Nice blog, Good views on the Automation and the Manual testing, Yes its true that Automation cannot complete replace Manual testing.
Thanks Shweta