This is my talk for the 2011 Selenium Conference about how to be successful in the test automation world.

1. Automated Battle Scars
Testing In The Wild
@admc

2. Background
OSAF - Windmill
Mozilla - Mozmill
Slide - Flex-Pilot
Sauce - Selenium
Free time - Jellyfish
Never thought I would see the day...

3. Convincing you
Nope, you’re here aren’t you?

4. You know it all
Selenium, WebDriver, Watir
Grid, IDE
CI, Source Control
Etc.

5. You may not know..
Starting an automation effort in your org
What this “automation” role really is
How best to frame your work for success
What to expect from automation
How to get the best results

6. Prison Rules
Day 1 - Punch a developer in the face :)

7. Roles
Evangelist++
Know your apps guts
Involve EVERYONE (no title is exempt)
No heroes or martyrs
Slow and steady wins the race

8. Grassroots
Small reasonable goals
Start with the most stable features
Keep track of progress and wins
Build your own test ‘framework’
Celebrate

9. Expectations
Automation won’t replace manual
No silver bullet
MONEY PATH!
Least moving parts possible

10. Tools
IDE’s are bad, write code
Right tools, no religion
Less infrastructure is better
Don’t re-invent

11. Results
Keep track, generate stats
Be vocal, let people know
Flakey tests can destroy you
Version control is your friend
Fair goals and measurement

12. Community
We are each others best resource
Contribute back
Communicate
Don’t criticize
We’re all trying to make life better

13. Tips
Test organization matters
Integrated process
Internal stages, eliminate external fail
Examples and abstraction FTW
Running tests must be trivial

14. Never forget
Automation is usually done by making software do
things it wasn’t supposed to.
There is always beer.

15. Announce
Se Builder
http://code.google.com/p/se-builder/
Jellyfish
jelly.io
Test-Machine: https://github.com/admc/test-machine
http://websockets.saucelabs.com:3000/

16. Thanks
web: admc.io
tweet: @admc
github: admc
“Officer, this guy is not waiting around for me… so you
better shoot me or help me but decide now!” - Jack Bauer