Not a long ago, test automation engineers’ role was to automate regression suite and to ensure more repetitive tasks are automated in the quality assurance activities. But due to the recent developments in the QA world and more migration towards Quality Engineering notion, the role of an automation engineer has enhanced from a “conversion of a repetitive manual task to automation scripts” to a substantial key player in the team. Below are some of the key roles and activities an automation engineer is demanded to play in a QE world.
Enabler of early automation in the Agile world:
With QEs performing automation in the sprint, automation tester should assist the sprint & system testers & pave way for early automation. Sprint automation roles include
Identification and setting up of software for sprint tester.
Building reusable test automation methods.
Adapting to one technology across multiple scrum teams.
Paving way for sprint regression testing.
Constructing test automation frameworks with BDD & TDD approach adapted.
Dev Team collaborators:
Automation engineers having the exposure to code could interact with the dev team to implement unit test and ensure the code meets the standards.
The bridge between DevOps and QA implementing CI/CD
Automaton engineers should work alongside the dev-ops team to bring in the CI/CD model by scheduling the build validation scripts in the code build & deployment process.
Automation Code integrators from a system to Integration test
With many scrum teams involved in early test automation, it’s the role of the test automation engineer to integrate the early automated scripts and align them for integration and regression testing
Test data creators:
With the demand for test data across test phase and to make the application testing more self-reliable, automation tester should create test data creation tools which will benefit the QA team by implementing application and service virtualization concepts.
Innovation Management & new technologies:
Implementing innovation thoughts and converting the thoughts into tools & utilities, automation team holds the responsibility of identifying innovations & bringing them to live and also bringing in the new technologies which will enable easy and better-quality testing in the team.
Performance Test scripts:
Automation team should work in line with the performance test team in creating scripts for generating load & for implementing continuous performance monitoring. Also, automation team should enable early performance testing by extending the sprint automation scripts for performance load generation.
Learning the domain:
Automation testers should learn the application domain in depth, as the automation testers work across test phases and with multiple teams can enable better application design & also assist in identifying the defects early.
Automation Trainers:
Automation team should coach the functional testing teams on the automation frameworks used, technology and tools adapted for automation. Doing so will result in more automation scripts and more automation leverage within the team. Apart from the traditional conversion of manual test flows into automated flows, identifying tools for automation, automation testers role is critical in a QE world and can act upon as a backbone of the Quality engineering shift.
Comment on any additional thoughts and responsibilities of automation testers in the quality engineering team.
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