What the test pyramid is hiding?

In each project, the test automation strategy is based on a test pyramid (maybe more 😮) but is it well understood?

Although the Test Pyramid metaphor is often used, everyone has their own interpretations therefore different pyramids can be found.

When you are in charge of a project and you want to have a good testing strategy, it is necessary to understand the concepts and principles of a technique in order to properly support what is important.

We will try to define the pyramid and then we will try to analyze how it was built.

Definition

The most common

Photo: Browser Stack

I thought I would find an official definition on wikipedia but it most often comes from blog post or commercial site. Here are selected extracts:

• Unit : quickly as possible in isolated conditions, tests individual components or functionalities to validate happy path, error handling, etc
• Integration : tests your application with all the parts that live outside of your application