A Story of a Veteran Manual Tester’s Learning Test Automation from a Coach: “One Question per Day”

Bruce, an experienced manual tester in his late 50s, crossed paths with me at a large tech company. Hearing my accomplishments in test automation, he approached the head of testing practices to learn from me. Meanwhile, I was already engaged in two projects then, which raised concerns among my managers when the testing lead relayed Bruce’s proposition. So, there were some conversations among the testing lead, my project managers and Bruce. In the end, the agreement was “Bruce can only ask Zhimin for helping one test automation problem each day”.

This is quite different from how I conduct test automation coaching, I found this idea intriguing too. Frankly, I initially perceived Bruce’s interest as more of an experimental endeavour than a serious commitment. However, this actually worked quite well. I share my experience and thoughts here, in case this might help some motivated QA engineers who are determined to learn E2E Test Automation.

First Day

Prior to commencing, knowing his limited access time with me, Bruce self-studied my book: “Practical Web Test Automation with Selenium WebDriver”.

The first day, of course, is setting up the test execution environment on Bruce’s machine and running a sample test (that came with TestWise IDE), which only took a few minutes. Then, I created a new test project for Bruce, and with his provided info, wrote a simple login test.

An example of running a Selenium test script in TestWise IDE

See driving the app in Chrome, only after a few minutes of work, Bruce showed great interest.

Nearly Every day onwards

Then, pretty much every day onwards, he came up (I was working at one level above) for me, “Zhimin, when you are free, can you come down and help me?”. I usually just went with him and finished solving his problem in under 2 minutes.

A Success

A few months later, Bruce was considered by his manager a competent test automation engineer. He managed to keep running his suite (> 50 tests) for a few years. He told me that there was pressure from new managers to ask to change the test automation framework, tool or language. His answer was, “Come and I will show you the execution of my current suite (raw Selenium WebDriver + RSpec, using TestWise IDE as the tool). If the new framework/tool achieves the same, I am happy to change”. Then, his managers (notice, plural) left him alone.

Why Did it work?

Technically, web test automation has barely changed for nearly two decades. An experienced real test automation engineer would have encountered and resolved the usual challenges associated with automating web pages. I consider myself a good (more importantly, real) hands-on test automation engineer. Moreover, I had extensive experience in mentoring others and accumulated many good examples, which are very useful in introducing new concepts to beginners.

Interested readers can check out my Web Test Automation workbook, a series of bite-sized and guided web test automation training with Selenium WebDriver.

Hence, I will highlight Bruce’s effective learning.

1. We have the exact setup (raw Selenium WebDriver + RSpec, using TestWise IDE)

So I could just get on the task straight away: rerun the failed test case in TestWise IDE (keeping the browser open) and get to inspect the problem immediately.

2. Bruce previously had no test automation knowledge/experience at all.

This is actually an advantage. Another mentee, Chelea, liked to tell others about my comment “Not Contaimined” when explaining this.

For example, Bruce won’t question me about the use of the framework, language, BDD, tool, …, etc. Bruce only had a few minutes per day, he simply judged by the results: satisfied with the automated test script as it does the work (as how he did manually).

By the way, Bruce found the test scripts (Selenium in Ruby) easier to read and maintain, and TestWise is great to use.

Of course, besides getting test scripts working, I would explain the how in a way that Bruce could mostly understand. If not, “ask me tomorrow”.

3. Bruce is prepared

Because Bruce knew that he only had a limited time with me, before coming up for my help, he already had a few tries and left at the state where errors/issues were exhibited. When I showed him the solution, he grasped the concept and techniques quickly.

For readers who don't believe I could fix web test automation issues so quickly. This is because I (and many other mentees, including Bruce) use TestWise's unique feature: Attach test execution to the existing browser).

Also, I found Bruce remembered the techniques and practices I taught him well, which means, he did spend time reviewing and practising them.

There is no cost to get started, the frameworks (Selenium + RSpec) are 100% free, and you also can use the TestWise tool in a forever-free mode. See AgileWay Test Automation Formula.

For readers who are sceptical about the effectiveness of my coaching, you can try it out with 30-minute Test Automation Coaching for $1, via Zoom. If you are in my city, face-to-face coaching, of course, will be even better.

This article was originally published on my Medium blog, 2023-08-17

Related reading:

My Books:

• Practical Web Test Automation with Selenium WebDriver
• Learn Ruby Programming by Examples