You're faced with transitioning to automated testing. How do you ensure quality isn't sacrificed?

When transitioning to automated testing, plan carefully by first identifying which test cases to automate based on their importance and stability. Choose appropriate tools that fit your needs and integrate well with your system. Develop a clear strategy for implementing automation, including setting goals, defining scope, and creating a timeline. Ensure you regularly review and update test scripts to keep them effective and relevant. This careful planning helps ensure that automation enhances quality without compromising it.

Let's address the question: "You're faced with transitioning to automated testing. How do you ensure quality isn't sacrificed?" There is no such thing as transitioning. There is only personal growth and the acquisition of new skills as a Tester. That said an analysis of every testing activity should be done and once that is completed then a decision to engage a tool(s) to assist you with the execution of your tests can then be made. "Testing" cannot be automated. So called "Automated Testing" is not a type, method or approach to testing but rather a method of test execution. Also "Testing" cannot and will not ensure quality although testing can and should contribute to the overall quality of the product.

Yes, without proper planning, there can be many issues related to the framework, technologies, and maintenance. Additionally, we should understand the project plan before developing the automation plan; this will help ensure low maintenance of the scripts.

Categorizing and prioritizing tests is a key factor. Doing this in the beginning helps to keep things focused, and managed. This provides for quick wins and feedback on the progress of the implementation.

In addition to the frequency of use and execution time, another crucial factor to consider is the lifecycle stage of the feature being tested. Features in their early development stages should not be prioritized for automation due to potential instability and frequent changes. Similarly, features in their final stages of development may not justify the effort of automation, as the return on investment would be minimal.

Framework has to be designed in a way that supports QA, Dev. Both are able to support it's environment and technology options. Then it has to be backed by project manager and their story creation. Time has to be allotted to support automation, just like normal product / new project development work.

It's really necessary to make sure your framework should be robust. Adding more into it, our framework should be regularly utilized for your validation to avoid the unwanted repeating manual focus. Framework should keep updating my stable changes by the main repo. Let's say, if your framework is selenium and testNG. We need to keep focusing on frequent updates which get stable in market.

The trained team is very helpful in the crucial phase of the project. To make a decision to deliver flawless features with proper plan

The principle of the "Pesticide Paradox," one of the seven fundamental testing principles, aligns perfectly with this need for regular test case maintenance. - We got to review & update Regression TCs periodically especially at times of less work pressure. - We started automating first with high priority end-to-end testing so that with every new release it triggers automatically integrated with CI/CD Jenkins, which ensures the product core functionalies are stable enough.