Ivan Indispensible

Ivan is the test architect and test automator for the project. He designed the automation using good programming practices, since he has a good background as a developer. His scripts are well-structured, and there is little if any duplication because he knows to create a new script with the common code which is called by each test that needs to do whatever is in that common script. The automation is a great success, with more and more tests being automated.

But the company has recently merged with a company that doesn’t have any automation, so they want to apply the automation to the applications that have recently been acquired. The new company has assigned Ramesh to find out about Ivan’s automation and apply it to their own systems. This is being done remotely, as the acquired company is in a different country (and time-zone). However, Ramesh is struggling to know what is going on, because Ivan hasn’t written much (if any) documentation or comments about the automation. To be honest, Ivan considered it a waste of time, as he was the only person using the automation at the time, but he now recognises that if the automation is to be more widely used, he may need to do things differently.

Exercises:

1) Go to Test Automation Issues Mind Map. Look through the Issue names and see if one stands out as Ivan's main problem.

2) Go to Test Automation Patterns Mind Map or Test Automation Patterns. Look through the Pattern names and see which stand out as possible solutions forI van.

3) Go to the Diagnostic. Answer the questions on Ivan's behalf and see if you find the same issues and patterns.

After doing these exercises, go to Exercise Solutions for some ideas.

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