Everywhere I turn these days, it seems like people are automating simply to say they automate. In a previous article titled Do You Really Need Automation, we explored the fact that many organizations aren't gaining a tangible benefit from automation but didn't explore how to target automation to make sure it adds value. We will do that here now.
Like many of you, I've been playing video games for about as long as I could sit up and hold a controller. I was fortunate enough to start PC gaming in the very early days and was just the right age during the Golden Age of PC Gaming (roughly '97 - '05) where I had the freedom of time found only in youth and willful unemployment but had the cognition of a young adult.
If you've looked for a QA job in the last few years, one item inevitably shows up on the requirements list; automation experience. And not just automation as a fundamental concept, very specific experience with tools like Selenium, Cucumber, Capybara, Watir, QTP, and SilkTest. At this point, automation is basically a ubiquitous term within Software Quality Assurance. I would go so far as to consider automation a software industry sacred cow of sorts when in reality, adds no real value for many of the companies who use it.
