When Should a Test Be Automated? 01

angelcc216

Brian Marick

Testing Foundations
marick@testing.com

I want to automate as many tests as I can. I’m not comfortable running a test only once.What if a programmer then changes the code and introduces a bug? What if I don’t catch that bug because I didn’t rerun the test after the change? Wouldn’t I feel horrible?


Well, yes, but I’m not paid to feel comfortable rather than horrible. I’m paid to be costeffective.It took me a long time, but I finally realized that I was over-automating, that only some of the tests I created should be automated. Some of the tests I was automating not only did not find bugs when they were rerun, they had no significant prospect of doing so. Automating them was not a rational decision.


The question, then, is how to make a rational decision. When I take a job as a contract tester, I typically design a series of tests for some product feature. For each of them, I need to decide whether that particular test should be automated. This paper describes how I think about the tradeoffs.

connie

+u+u
继续努力：）

migen

试着翻译了这一段，感觉不是很好，需要努力阿。
自勉一下！

migen

我想尽可能的让所有的测试都能自动执行，但我不能舒适的执行，哪怕只有一次。因为程序员若改表代码并且引进bug怎么办？我若因为没有在程序改变后重新测试怎么办？我不会感觉到厌烦吗？就是这样, 但我被要求舒适而不是厌烦，也被要求是有效的。这些花费我很长时间, 但我最终意识到我在过度自动化, 我创建的测试用例中只有一部份应该被自动化测试。 我的这些自动化测试在他们被重新运行时不仅没有查找到bug,而且也没有重大潜在意义要如此做。 自动化测试不是一个合理的决策。然后的问题是怎么做出合理的决策。 当我作为合同测试人员的工作时, 我为产品某些性能设计了一系列典型的测试用例。 对于他们中的每一个， 我需要决定那些特殊测试用例是否应该被自动化执行。 文章描述我怎么考虑平衡。