8 Reasons Your Automation Engineers Loathe Your Test Management Tool
In the realm of automation and QA, where attempts at precision and efficiency reign supreme, there exists a shadowy feeling lurking beneath the glossy facade of your test case management tool. As a vulnerable automation engineer with a modest amount of experience, I am going to lay bare the unspoken resentments that are plaguing your automation teams around the pretty tool.
This article was originally published on medium: 8 Reasons Your Automation Engineers Loathe Your Test Management Tool
Automation: The Outcast
The eventual outcast of test case management tools is penultimately automation.
These so-called “powerful” “tools” often forget their true purpose: to empower quick and speedy delivery of the product.
How? With automation.
Instead, they treat automation as an afterthought, pushing it to the margins and leaving us to fend for ourselves in a labyrinth of convoluted workflows built for the manual tester and APIs long abandoned and left to crumble.
Lost in Translation: Requirements Edition
In the realm of testing, clarity is king.
Alas, some test case management tools seem to have skipped their language lessons, leaving us drowning in a sea of miscommunication.
Requirements tracking? Forget about it!
Mediocre integrations are the standard here. They advertise a Jira integration, but in reality it’s not an integration. It’s an iframe on your Jira Issue that gives you nothing to query. Or doesn’t even work with your niche enterprise requirements tools so you’re left figuring out what requirements still matter and have been deleted. Pfff.
Reporting: A Symphony of Banality
Picture this: a dull collection of mind-numbing reports, lacking the finesse and sophistication worthy of a true engineer to fine-tune and optimize their craft.
All too often, these test case management tools offer rigid reporting options that fail to capture the essence of our craft.
Where’s the flourish?
Where’s the nuance?
Where’s the JQL integration?
We’re left with a one-size-fits-all approach that’s about as exciting as watching paint dry on a concrete wall.
Maintenance: The Never-Ending Tedious Task
Ah, test suite maintenance, the mundane repetitive task of automation teams.
And what better way to magnify the pain than with clunky interfaces, convoluted workflows, and test case versioning nightmares?
These tools seem to revel in our suffering, ensuring that the simple act of maintaining a test suite that combines both manual and automated work too becomes an exercise in frustration and futility.
🧑💻: What have the manual testers done this time?
🕵️: Why can’t the automation engineers just get the workflow?
These tools are often catered for antiquated processes. Whenever there is an update to the test in the tooling, some lead time process must exist to tell the automation engineer that an update has occurred. How does reporting look in the meantime? Who knows?
Compatibility: A Fair Tale Gone Wrong
Once upon a time, we dreamed of compatibility, of seamless integration with our beloved automation frameworks and tools. Sadly, reality had other plans. These test case management tools have become the meddling in-laws of our automation ecosystem, forcing us into endless compromises, frustrating workarounds, and custom integration nightmares. What pytest plug-in should we make this month? Oh… you need it in Ruby? Give me six months.
Collaboration: What’s That?
In the age of teamwork and camaraderie, these tools seem determined to keep us isolated and disconnected. Collaboration? Forget about it! We’re left stranded on individual islands, desperately waving flags of communication, while these tools turn a blind eye to our need for effective collaboration, knowledge sharing, and coordinated efforts. Management of course, insists waving these flags are just temporary! The dance of cultural change and team realignment, of course, does nothing, but turn us into foreigners on other’s islands forced to wave a new flag.
CI/CD Integration: The Dance of Incompatibility
As automation and DevOps teams strive for the holy-grail of agility, these tools seem hell-bent on tripping us at every step. Seamless integration with CI/CD pipelines? Trololll. These test case management tools mock us with their lackluster integrations, causing friction, delays, and unnecessary hurdles in our quest for rapid test execution and quick product delivery. Network instability on their side. No generic CI tooling. You have a Jenkins plug-in? Sorry we abandoned Jenkins five years ago.
Test Data Management: A Kafkaesque Nightmare
In the realm of automation testing, test data is our lifeblood. But oh, how these tools delight in tormenting us! Their feeble attempts at test data management lead us down a labyrinth of data redundancy, setup woes, and maintenance nightmares. It’s as if they’re conspiring to drain the life force from our automation endeavors. I don’t know how many times I’ve ended up building my own test result database (or some hacked representation of one), simply because they suck at showing us the data.
Conclusion:
Stop using test case management tools.
K. Thanx