Nordic Testing Days 2023

Have you ever had a project where more time was spent on maintaining the automated tests than doing actual test work? Have you had a project where the automated tests fail constantly? Like many fellow testers, I have experienced the pain of spending more time analyzing the test failure than I would have spent manually testing the functionality.
This is a talk inspired by test automation efforts that started with much enthusiasm but failed hopelessly due to low maintainability. Luckily, I also found inspiration in successful projects where maintainability was at the core of its implementation. In this talk, I will share my experiences and tips on how to create maintainable automated tests.
After a short summary of the most common issues that I identified in the failed automation efforts, I will discuss how to avoid these issues by setting up a solid test automation architecture. An architecture with layers of abstraction, where each layer has its own responsibilities, forms the basis for maintainable test automation. Implementing these layers properly can be quite the challenge. How can you distribute your test code over the different layers of your test automation architecture, i.e. what goes where? That is where the 8 ‘Commendments’ come into play (Commendments being a wordplay on recommendations and commandments). These commendments - for example: “Manage your test data as code” or “Only control relevant test data, generate everything else” - will cover how to write maintainable tests using the different layers of your test automation architecture. For each commendment I will show practical examples. This presentation will focus on UI tests and show examples using Java, Cucumber and/or Gherkin, however the commendments can be applied to other forms of automated tests as well, using other tools or languages.