1. LESSONS LEARNED IN TEST
AUTOMATION OF ERP APPLICATION
Kishore Chavali
Presented at QAI Conference Bangalore (1999)

2. INITIAL PROJECT
 Automation project completed with extensive use of
record and playback
 Heavy initial investment to develop lot of scripts

3. LESSONS LEARNED
 Record and Playback approach is not effective
when application is data dependent
 Test Automation is development
 It is not possible to achieve automated testing in all
types of testing
 Error Recovery routine is very important for
automated test suite to be successful.
 Test Automation will have bugs.

4. REVISED PROJECT
 Recruited test developers
 Developed Test Scripting Standards
 Reuse of Test Scripts designed and developed
 Developed an efficient Error Recovery routine.
 Trained test developers
 Developed more data driven tests
 Invested automation efforts in areas that are most
critical

5. PAY ATTENTION
 Immature testing Processes and methods
 Technical Limitations of tools
 Return on Investment of Test Automation

6. REFERENCES
 Test Automation Snake Oil by James Bach.
www.satisfice.com/articles/test_automation_snake_oil.
pdf
 Automated Software Testing – A Perspective by Kerry
http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/archive.php?id
=33
 Success with Test Automation by Bret Pettichord
http://www.prismnet.com/~wazmo/succpap.htm
 Howard Fear on Test Automation by Howard Fear
 Lessons from Automation by Elfriede Dustin (Featured
Article in STQE Magazine):
http://www.stickyminds.com/sitewide.asp?ObjectId=180
2&Function=edetail&ObjectType=ART