E2E Test Automation Anti-Pattern: Semi-Automated Execution

A proper End-to-End Automated Script is 100% fully automated, with no human intervention at all.

Let me start with a story. Several years back, I joined a software team (as a test automation consultant) that already had a senior automated tester X (contractor) on board.

During the demonstration of test automation execution (using Ranorex), I observed that X had to manually press a button or initiate a mouse click to dismiss a popup window and proceed. Evidently, X incorporated some wait times into the test scripts to accommodate this process. I refer to this approach as “semi-automated execution,” which is a bad practice.

Certainly, X also knew that it was not optimal. He justified it by attributing the issue to limitations in the tool.

I am not discrediting Ranorex or any specific tool here; the issue might be attributed to an individual tester.

I couldn’t verify as I did not know Ranorex well. Later in the day, I presented an alternative version using Appium + WinAppDriver (in the Ruby language), which ran 100% automated without requiring any human intervention. (For more information about Desktop App Test Automation with Appium, check out my book: Practical Desktop App Test Automation with Appium).