Test automation optimization program
Get more valuable feedback, faster, from your existing test automation by identifying and addressing the problems that make your tests slow, brittle, expensive or ineffective.
The goal of test automation is to provide fast, reliable, meaningful feedback that helps development teams build and release software with confidence. But as applications, test suites and teams grow, test automation can become increasingly difficult to maintain and increasingly slow at providing useful feedback.
Many organisations respond by throwing more tests, more tools or more infrastructure at the problem. However, this can often make things worse rather than better.
The problem is often not that you don’t have enough automated tests. It is that your existing tests aren’t providing the right feedback at the right time.
I can help you change that.
Let’s discuss your test automation situation
Where the test automation optimization program helps
This engagement is particularly useful when:
- Your automated tests take too long to provide useful feedback
- Your end-to-end test suite has become large, slow or difficult to maintain
- You are struggling with a significant number of flaky tests
- Your teams spend too much time investigating test failures that don’t indicate real problems
- You have duplication between unit, integration, and end-to-end tests
- You aren’t sure whether your current distribution of tests is appropriate for your architecture
- Your test automation suite has grown organically and you are wondering whether it is still fit for purpose
- You want to improve your test automation efforts, but don’t know which problems to tackle first
Is adding more tests really the answer?
Adding more automated tests doesn’t automatically give you more confidence.
Before recommending new tools, technologies or testing techniques, we’ll look at your product architecture, your existing test automation suite, your development process and the feedback your teams actually receive from their tests.
We’ll find an answer to questions such as:
- How quickly do developers get useful feedback after making a change?
- Which tests provide the most valuable feedback?
- Where are you relying too heavily on end-to-end tests?
- Which tests are slow, flaky or expensive to maintain?
- Where are different types of tests duplicating each other’s work?
- Where are important defects or integration problems not being detected early enough?
- Are your test suites structured in a way that fits your architecture and development process?
- Where can feedback be moved closer to the developer?
The goal is to help your teams get valuable feedback, fast, not to maximize the number of automated tests.
A tailored test automation optimization program
We co-create a tailored engagement, designed to improve the effectiveness of your test automation and the feedback it provides.
Depending on your goals and the problems we uncover, the engagement can include:
- An in-depth review of your current testing strategy and architecture
- An assessment of your existing automated test suites
- Analysis of test execution times and feedback cycles
- Identification of slow, flaky, redundant or low-value tests
- Identifying opportunities to reduce reliance on end-to-end tests
- Reviewing how unit, integration, API, contract and end-to-end tests complement each other
- Identifying gaps where important feedback is missing
- Reviewing your test automation architecture and CI/CD workflows
- Designing a more effective distribution of tests
- Hands-on support implementing the most valuable improvements
- Coaching developers, testers and technical leaders
- Follow-up sessions to review progress and address new challenges
Engagements typically start with a short discovery and assessment phase, followed by hands-on optimization support tailored to your organisation and context.
Every engagement is built around your needs. You might need an independent assessment of a test suite that has grown out of control, help reducing the execution time of your CI/CD pipeline, or hands-on support redesigning your approach to automated testing.
Why work with me?
I’ve been helping organisations improve their test automation efforts for over 20 years.
My experience includes:
- Helping organisations design and implement effective test automation strategies
- Working with teams to reduce their reliance on slow and brittle end-to-end tests
- Extensive experience with API testing, contract testing and end-to-end test automation
- Helping development and testing teams design automation that provides fast, reliable feedback
- Delivering test automation training and consulting for organisations around the world
- Working with developers, testers and technical leaders to improve testing practices and software delivery
Just as importantly, I don’t believe that there is a universal test automation architecture that every organisation should adopt. The right approach depends on your architecture, technology, team structure and development process.
My focus is on helping your teams understand which feedback they need, where that feedback should come from, and how to get it as quickly and reliably as possible.
What you will get from this program
By the end of the engagement, your team will have:
- A clear understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of your current test automation
- An overview of where your automated tests provide valuable feedback and where they don’t
- A clear view of the biggest bottlenecks affecting feedback speed, reliability and value
- Concrete opportunities to reduce test duplication and maintenance effort
- A more effective strategy for distributing tests across different levels
- Practical improvements to your test automation and development workflows
- A prioritised roadmap for further optimization
My objective isn’t to introduce another testing tool or to help you create more automated tests. I’m here to help your teams get valuable product feedback, fast with test automation.
Let’s discuss your situation
Every organisation is different, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to test automation.
Whether your test suite has become too slow, your teams are struggling with flaky tests, you’re relying too heavily on end-to-end testing, or you’re simply wondering whether your current approach is still fit for purpose, I’d be happy to discuss your situation and explore how I can help.