Incompetent and opinionated people are the biggest problem in IT

Automation doesn’t find bugs. People find bugs, and automation plays a role (sometimes a very powerful role) in finding bugs.

Tools don’t do stuff on their own. Automated checks don’t design themselves. Programs don’t set out to analyse output, or to produce the kind of input that can trigger problems. People do that stuff.

A medium is something in between something and something else. Tools are media between ourselves and a job we want to do. Media enable, extend, enhance, accelerate, or intensify our capabilities. That’s fine when we're good at what we do; automation enhances our superpowers, allowing skilled testers to identify bugs in exactly the ways Katja describes in the post linked below.

(An early version of my post didn’t include the link. My post started as a repost with comments, but LinkedIn appears to have forgotten that.)

The key in all this is the skilled tester, since automation also allows bad testing to be done faster and worse than ever.

Tools intensify our sight and our focus; they just as easily intensify blindness. Ever tried someone else's eyeglasses, or worn sunglasses at night? Ever noticed how binoculars restrict your field of view, even as they magnify the thing you’re looking at?

Tools can help us to find certain bugs faster and more powerfully than we ever could on our own. They can also help to direct attention to trivial things, distracting us from the more important ones.

Tools can help save time and effort for other things. Tools also require development, preparation, maintenance, interpretation and vigilance that can cost more time than we might be saving.

When we say "automation finds bugs" we give credit to the wrong thing—the tool, instead of the tester using the tool. That opens the door for the tool vendors to suggest that testers don’t need skill; and for inept managers to believe that testers can be replaced by tools, or that "we should set 100% automated testing as the goal".

Katja here tells stories of success. That's fine. But it’s Katja and her colleagues who deserve the credit for finding the bugs, using tools appropriately and skilfully. Automation can help us find bugs.

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Michael Bolton, RST

False positive ?

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