In this show Federico and Matthew explore the question of "when too much automation is too much?" Based on their experiences in the ASP.NET QA team, they talk about the danger of automating for the sake of automation, the problems that it can create, and the value of context driven testing.

News

• New name and name website: Coding QA.
• .NET Micro Framework has been open sourced.

Automation for the sake of automation

• What is the goal of automation? To find bugs during development vs. to find regressions after development.
• What problems can arise from having too much automation? The tale of the ASP.NET QA "boat anchor".
• Context matters when deciding how to ensure a feature does not regress.
• What parameters can be used to decide the testing approach
  • Automation cost.
  • Time of delivery.
  • Resources available.
  • Risk of a regression.
  • Customer impact if a regression is introduced.
  • Quickness between when the regression is introduced and when it is discovered.
• Real examples from the team
  • Testing event handler generation for web controls in VS.
  • Testing picker dialogs for web controls in VS.