Ian McCowatt talks about the advantages of exploratory testing and automated tasks over automated tests.
Robot paradigm:
- Whole tests
- Repeatability
Implications of the robot/factory approach:
- Loss of human judgment
- Binary results (pass/fail) rather than judgements (does it fail if x vs at what x does it fail)
- Goal displacement (e.g. percentage of automated test)
- Gradual loss of information value (likelihood of a particular feature failing is low)
Instrument paradigm
- Using instruments to assist testing
Implications of the instrument paradigm:
- Research focus (answer questions about the software, exploratory testing)
- Extends and enhances - play to strengths of tools (repetition, precision, …) and strength of humans (judgment)
- Potential (less narrow view of functionality)