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Testers and Automated Testing

We all know the value a tester brings to projects and the industry is now finally valuing testers as equals to developers. However, one thing that is often a debate is the input or role a tester has on automated testing. Testers can have a major influence in automated testing without having to write all tests on their own.

In my company, testers are expected to be technical and be able to write automated tests on their own. In fact the expectation is to create the Automation Framework too. I am not a fan of testers creating automation frameworks or writing automated tests on their own. I would prefer for testers to pair with developers on any automated testing activity, be it the framework or writing automated tests.

Testers understand the application backwards and they are the best candidates to identify what should be tested. Now, by collaborating with the developers, both can make an informed decision as to what can be tested and at what level. For e.g. Some tests are worth writing at the UI level as the tests which are written on the underlying layers do not cover that. This also gives both tester and developer confidence on the test coverage.

As a result of this, the tester need not waste time testing all those weird cases manually as they have automated tests to validate them and the tester can focus on other edge/weird/negative/boundary cases which could detect some defects.

Also, another benefit of this is that the testers would be able to learn better coding techniques by pairing with developers and have a better understanding of the codebase. This would help them to read the code better and possibly find defects by reading code as well.

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