There are Design Patterns that, although simple, provide a powerful impact on the overall test strategy. Too often the automation engineers toil away at a fancy framework capability that does not end up delivering a lot of impact. At times, he has done this. The challenge is just too enticing. As engineers, we like solving problems and that addiction takes you to solve more and more complexity.

He is not suggesting that we don’t follow complexity where it leads us. However, he says that there may be some low-hanging fruit as they say that inversely ends up adding a lot of value.

Some examples he would like to share:

Test Specialization versus Test Generalization – Simplifying automated tests to a singular verification point rather than many. This leads to better “test report legibility” and quick test triage response times.

Page Verification Tests – Simple tests that only test element visibility on a web page. They reinforce your Page Object Model Validity and also catch major crashes on UI pages without being under the guise of a failed Functional Test.

Abstracted Test Workflows – Automated tests are as selfish and greedy as software testers can be. They are not so good at sharing. Creating workflows for your automated tests means that all the code that would have only lived within your test method can be leveraged by another test and fixed in one place. The solution is less simple in setting up but ends up being simpler in the lifetime of the test.

Takeaways from the topic:

• PVTs are great for anyone learning UI Test Automation
• Test Design should consider the needs of the project team and that they all can read the test reports.