Record & Playback, You Have My Apologies

Dear Record & Playback,

I know that it's been a while since we've spoken, but I've been thinking about you lately. It's time I get some things off my chest. Remember when I was just a kid in the world of test automation? Seems like it was just yesterday. I was walking past some cubes in an office building when I saw you testing an application all by yourself, with no one else in sight. I thought I'd seen a ghost and had to do a double take to make sure it was actually happening.

You were the coolest thing in the world to me. Immediately you took me under your wing and showed me so many new and wonderful things about automation scripting. With you, I quickly learned the automated test tool language. We were inseparable.

That was years ago, though, and everything's different now. Thinking back on those good times makes me a little remorseful about the way things turned out. For years I blamed you, but as time progresses I see that perhaps I was too hard on you. My desire is for us to move forward into a more positive relationship, but first we must step back and see where we went wrong.

Where We Separated …
For me, your dishonesty was at the heart of the rift. When we first met, you made a lot of grandiose promises about what you were capable of, and I believed you. You promised effortless automation by simply recording the execution of manual test steps in the application. You promised seamless overnight runs by playing back that recorded script. You promised that automated test analysis only required a brief inspection of an easy-to-read report. You even promised to reduce automated test maintenance to the click of a button. I foolishly believed you when you said that click would correct the script with an update run or by simply re-recording a small portion of a test script.

Slowly, however, the veil began to lift from my eyes as I watched recorded tests fail miserably when played back--minutes after being created. I saw poor coding standards and redundancy grossly expand analysis and maintenance to epic proportions. I watched automation efforts fail throughout the industry due to people underestimating the total cost and overestimating the return on investment.

At first I thought it was all due to misunderstandings, but then I saw how you pushed the damaging untruths about test automation. You aligned with and allowed yourself to be used by many dishonest tool vendors. At that point, I no longer wanted to associate myself with you. I went on a crusade to alert others that relying on you would be detrimental to an automation effort that seeks to create a robust, maintainable suite of automated tests.

I never fully abandoned you, but our relationship was forever altered.

Moving Forward …
Part of me still feels justified for taking a strong stance against you. It was necessary to counter the false claims about your capabilities! However, I do think there's a way we can mend our broken relationship.

Instead of allowing you to be continuously misused by those motivated to achieve their sales quotas, I want to help lead you back onto the path of righteousness. I can help you and others understand the good you bring to our world when used properly within an effective automated testing process--even to test automation efforts that value maintainability. But you'd have to try and fit within the following process: 

1. Learn the application and the object dynamics
2. Address the desired quality attributes
3. Create a directory