By Paul Cooper, Senior Performance Test Engineer
Test automation can be a costly time consuming endeavor. Often automation code and test data become entangled, leading to both fragile tests and fragile automation code. Once that happens, new tests will require programming to implement them. This helps us understand why testers now need coding skills. Design changes to the application, such as changing where or how a value is input, will also require updating the automation code and in turn may disrupt the test data.