“Test automation” is a hot topic. If you are in the testing field, then you are probably being pressured to automate your work. But how should you go about it? Only certain specific aspects of testing can be automated, so which aspects should you focus on first? There are lots of expensive tools you could use, but there are also free tools, and maybe you can create some tools yourself. What should you NOT focus on? What traps must you try to avoid? How can AI help — or hurt?

Creating, applying, and maintaining useful automation to support testing can be immensely valuable. It’s also a huge challenge. This one-day class is designed to help you help you meet that challenge, looking through the lenses of the Rapid Software Testing methodology.

Maybe you’re a coder; maybe you’re not. This class is designed to help you either way. If don’t write code, we don’t teach you how, but we will help you learn to work immediately and productively with people who do.

In this class, we’ll help you — and through you, your organization — to expand notions of automation beyond GUI or API output checking. We will show you some creative uses of inexpensive tools. We’ll help you to analyze dimensions of cost and value, and to evaluate how different kinds of tools can help or hurt your testing. And we’ll talk about to recognize and learn from things that happen in the Secret Life of Automation.

This class is not affiliated with any tool vendor, and we don’t teach you to operate any specific tool. We may demonstrate or mention particular tools during the class, but we have not accepted and will not accept any payment or benefit from commercial interests. (We may be biased, but we have not been bribed.) We will show you how to analyze vendor claims critically.

In short, this class is about the essence of automation strategy: vision and setting goals that make sense for you and your organization.