Maintainable Automated Test Design

Design automated test scripts that are easy to maintain

All test automation engineers know that a single application change may break many automated test scripts, and these kinds of application changes happen constantly. To effectively deal with it, test automation engineers need to be in a position to respond to a simple application change in a matter of seconds (here, I mean the time taken to modify the test scripts, excluding execution).

The key to test maintenance (a common problem in test automation) is the test script, not the test tool. Tool vendors like to focus on their tools or deliberately blur the relationship between test scripts and testing tools, for the sake of commercial interests. It is the test engineer’s knowledge that ultimately determines the quality of the test scripts. Good testing tools should help tester engineers transform their knowledge into reality, efficiently. But first, the test engineers need to have that knowledge.

“Expensive Tools Do Not Produce Better Designs” — The Pragmatic Programmer book, Tip 59

To maintain a large number of automated test scripts that can keep up with application changes, we need to design intuitive test scripts that can be updated efficiently by testers (or even business analysts).

• Intuitive to read

Generally speaking, testers are not tech-savvy. Therefore test scripts must be intuitive, and ideally readable. How intuitive should…