Beautiful Testing

The Beauty of Agile Testing

Pettichord wrote another well-known article, “Four Schools of Software Testing.” The existence of Watir, Selenium, and Fit brought about what is generally recognized as a fifth school, “Agile Testing,” which always advocates a very high level of test automation and usually acknowledges the value of manual examination of the application by skilled testers.

The promise of great test automation has always been to free testers from the drudgery of the repetitive checking of proper function. But if the repetitive checking of proper function is automated, what then is a software tester to do?

For one thing, the tester can become an expert in the design and implementation of system test frameworks. This involves programming, but programming these sorts of system test frameworks is nothing at all like application development. Programming a beautiful test automation harness requires an understanding of the system under test as well as an understanding of what sort of tests are most likely to be written, and what sort of testing is most likely to be valuable to the project, and what sorts of tests are most likely to be maintainable into the future as the application being tested undergoes changes. It is fascinating and rewarding work, and has been a big part of my own career.

An agile tester is also certainly an aesthetic critic. With the test automation examining the dusty corners of the application, the tester is free to evaluate with a critical eye the ...