The fear of Test Automation replacing humans
We’ve all heard the fear of robots replacing human labour and in the world of Quality Assurance this is becoming a reality.
What we do as QA Engineers is write tests! We create a set of test steps that we follow with an expected result at the end. Then when we run the test, we compare the outcome with the expected result. If they match up — then bingo! It’s test pass! However, if they don’t match, then a big red flag is flown to show that something has gone wrong.
A single application could have hundreds of tests that need to be run to check previous developed and tested software have no unintended changes made to them. We call this, regression testing. This can be very repetitive and has big cost and time implications.
So, what do we do to overcome these problems? We use special software that will run the tests for you! Invisible employees that take on the repetitive tasks. Instead of taking 3 days, it will take under one hour for the tests to run.
You would assume that QA Engineers are worried about this — but not at all. This software is not destroying our job prospects, but only improving them by freeing us of the mundane tasks!