Is test automation simply not a right fit for some medium/large organisations, regardless of whether they "care" or not and assuming it can be applied there? What are the most common reasons for this?
My perspective:
In my experience, there still seems to be a fairly clear separation in medium to large organisations who care about test automation (if only the possibility) and those who don't. Those who care:
- Understand the benefit but also the resource/skill requirements
- Invest time and effort in upskilling manual test resources into automation where possible, and focus on the high-priority features/applications
- Understand what should be automated and what shouldn't, and invest their time and money accordingly
However, those who don't either:
- Don't have the development resource to fix all the bugs!
- Don't understand the value, or appreciate the cost-to-fix ratio
- Don't have dedicated test resource (per project, or as FTE)
- Don't care about test automation (even unit testing)
I'm beginning to see more and more in the "don't care about test automation" bracket. I struggle to believe that any organisation can be so myopic in their reasoning when they weigh up the costs/benefits in pretty-print, but would appreciate anyone's thoughts/experience on why this may be. And whether this is doomed to continue.
Software is an asset to the organisation and if key stakeholders don't appreciate high quality as a reflection on the organisation, they shouldn't be releasing any software in the first place.
I understand that small startups, say, care less about test automation and more about getting their product into the market, but there is still an alarmingly large number of organisations who have obvious bugs/issues and (seemingly) simply don't care. If something critical is broken, it will be fixed. If something less critical is broken but drives away X number of customers...if a tree falls in the woods.