A Principles-Based Approach to Create Test Automation Strategies That Work at Scale

Have you ever found it difficult to get alignment and consensus on test automation in your organization? Have you ended up with test suites that did not work, with slow feedback and flakey tests? Or perhaps you got lost in debates on what a Unit Test, Acceptance Test or Integration Test are? You are not alone. In this workshop we will take you through how we have attempted to address some of these challenges at Cazoo, where we introduced a set of Test Automation Guiding Principles with the aim of driving consistency and alignment in approach without being overly prescriptive on implementation. We will introduce our principles and – through group activities – we will create opportunities for you to reflect on, critique and evaluate these principles based on your own belief and experience. While our principles are tailored to our context (distributed systems, Continuous Delivery), the philosophy behind them is applicable to other contexts. You will also be presented with our Automated Test Attributes: a way of describing tests by their characteristics, rather than simply labelling them (e.g., unit, component, integration, acceptance, e2e), and resolving those never-ending debates about the different types of tests. By the end of the session, you will have had a chance to understand and analyze our approach, and take away ideas for how to evolve or shift how automation strategy is driven in your teams and organizations.