Sheressa H.

As a Test Automation Engineer (Test Engineer) my job is to: design, build, test, and deploy effective test automation solutions. To fulfill the role I apply appropriate automation technologies to meet the short and long term goals of the testing organization. My objective is to automate as much of the testing effort as possible with a minimum set of code / scripts. The focus is to be on test effort not testing coverage - if one manual test case or manual test preparation process consumes a large percentage of test resources then this manual process will be the first to be automated. UNIT TEST As a Test Automation Engineer, in this case, the application developer, instruments the application code in order to enable effective and repetitive unit testing of the code before it is incorporated into the current build. There are several Agile Development paradigms that incorporate this concept / process into their standard development cycle. FUNCTION & SYSTEM TEST The test automation engineer develops automated solutions to expedite test. This can take the form of tooling to increase the efficiency of test preparation and / or the creation automated of test cases. ACCEPTANCE The test automation engineer develops and deploys automated solutions to expedite acceptance test. In Function and System test the Test Engineer fulfilLs the same role but it is in the context of the Test Organization - if automation tooling is deployed as part of Acceptance Test then the automation solution should be treated / tested as part of the System being deployed. TEST AUTOMATION FRAMEWORK A test automation framework is the method or process being used to implement automation. Several frameworks have been implemented over the years by commercial vendors and testing organizations the skills required to develop within any given framework define the skills required by the Test Automation Engineer. RECORD & PLAYBACK Record and Playback frameworks were the first commercially successful testing solutions. The Automation Engineer simply records a series of steps or actions against the application using the appropriate Record and Playback tool. "Test Automation Engineer as a Tool-smith." EXTENDED RECORD & PLAYBACK It became quickly apparent that a simple Record and Playback paradigm was not very effective and did not make test automation available to non-technical users. Several commercial vendors, test organizations, and automation engineers began extending the Record & Playback framework to make the solution more robust and transparent. These extensions included: Data Driven, Keyword, and Component Based solutions - as the Record & Playback framework was extended the Automation Engineer had to develop and deploy solutions (code) within the context of the extended framework. "Test Automation Engineer as a Tool-smith and developer." LOAD/PERSISTENCE Load / Performance test frameworks provide a mechanism to simulate transactions against the application being tested and to measure the behavior of the application while it is under this simulated load. The automation engineer determines how to: load, measure, and control the application. Using the load-testing tool the engineer implements the automation solution to accomplish this task, the Automation Engineer will often need to extend the Load / Performance framework. "Test Automation Engineer as Analyst, Tool-smith and Developer." TEST MANDATE & SCOPE The Test Automation Engineer must have a clear understanding of the Testing Mandate and how automation can be applied to help meet this mandate - for more on Testing Mandates and Testing Scope see the associated article Testing and The Role of a Test Lead / Test Manager. The temptation of any automation engineer is to automate everything; the challenge is to determine what should be automated and in what sequence to get the maximum return on the automation investment. Other roles in the testing organization focus on testing the application the automation engineer attempts to expedite the testing process by supplying and maintaining an appropriate automation solution.