The Automation Illusion - Moving Beyond Scripts to Meaningful Impact
Words from the editor
We are drowning in automation hype. I would in fact say we have drowned completely already.
Everywhere you turn, someone is selling the dream: automate all your tests, achieve 100 percent coverage, switch to low-code tools, and magically deliver quality at speed. Teams are racing to convert old “manual” test cases into scripts without stopping to ask the one question that actually matters.
Why?
Why are we automating? Why are we writing these scripts? Why are we pretending automation is a strategy when it’s just a tool?
Here’s the uncomfortable truth. Most automation efforts today are automating mediocrity. They take bloated, outdated, poorly designed test cases and turn them into brittle, expensive, overengineered code. Then they slap the label “automation tester” on someone’s profile and call it a win.
It is not a win. It is a waste.
True automation is not about mindless translation. It is about elevating testing. It demands sharp analysis, smart design, and a relentless focus on value. It challenges assumptions and optimizes effort. It amplifies good testing. It does not mask bad testing.
But there is another layer to this problem, one we do not talk about enough.
Even when testers understand this, they are often surrounded by stakeholders who do not. Leaders who say “automate all the tests” without knowing what that even means. Managers who obsess over coverage numbers but ignore risk. Teams who buy into the “automagic” fantasy and wonder why their projects still collapse under the weight of complexity.
This edition of Quality Quest is here to call it out. Loudly. Clearly. Without apology.
We bring you two articles that pull no punches.
The first, Breaking the Spell: Why Test Automation Is Not Automagic, takes a hammer to the biggest myths we face. It looks at where these fantasies come from, why they survive, and how testers can push back with confidence. It gives you the words and strategies to challenge bad assumptions and educate your teams before the next doomed automation project kicks off.
The second, From Scripts to Strategy: Redefining the Role of the Automation Tester, flips the conversation toward action. It explores what it really means to be an automation tester today. Not just someone who writes scripts, but someone who designs better testing. Someone who understands impact, prioritization, risk, and value. Someone who raises the bar for the whole team.
Because the future of automation is not about doing more. It is about doing better.
So, if you are tired of the same old noise, this edition is for you. If you want to stop automating for the sake of appearances and start automating for real, measurable change, this edition is for you. And if you want to be the person in the room who helps your team finally break the illusion, this edition is definitely for you.
Let’s stop pretending. Let’s start leading.
Welcome to Volume 24.
Breaking the Spell: Why Test Automation Is Not Automagic by Brijesh DEB
Automation Hype, Reality Check
Test automation is not magic!
It will not save your project. It will not eliminate bugs. It will not transform bad processes into good ones, bad teams into good ones, or bad decisions into good outcomes.
But you would never know that from the way companies talk about it.
Everywhere you look, automation is sold as the silver bullet. Vendors promise that with the right tool, the right framework, or the right shiny “no-code” platform, you can automate everything. Executives echo the chorus, pushing teams to automate all the tests and achieve 100 percent coverage. Teams scramble to keep up, racing to convert every so-called “manual” test into a script, convinced they are building the future.
And then comes the crash.
The scripts are flaky. The maintenance costs explode. The coverage numbers mean nothing because the wrong things are being tested. Deadlines slip anyway. Bugs still escape. And testers get blamed for “failing to automate.”
What went wrong?
The answer is painfully simple. We fell for the illusion.
Chapter One: The Automagic Lie
Time for some brutal honesty.
There is no such thing as “automate all tests.” There is no such thing as “100 percent coverage.” There is no such thing as “one tool fits all.”
Yet these myths continue to thrive because they offer the one thing humans crave when facing complexity: false certainty.
Automation gets pitched as the shortcut, the escape route, the clever hack that lets you avoid the hard work of thinking, designing, collaborating, and improving. You just plug it in, and boom, quality happens.
Except it does not.
The truth is, automation cannot replace strategy. It cannot replace critical thinking. It cannot replace human judgment, user empathy, or product understanding. It can only amplify what is already there.
Automating junk gives you junk at speed. Automating thoughtless test cases gives you thoughtless scripts. Automation without purpose is just faster waste.
Chapter Two: Where the Myths Begin
How did we get here?
Part of the blame lies with the testing community itself. For years, we have measured success with shallow metrics: number of automated tests, lines of code, percentage of tests automated. We built dashboards that looked impressive but told no meaningful story.
Tool vendors amplified the problem, selling visions of effortless automation, drag-and-drop frameworks, and dashboards that promised to make non-technical users into testing superheroes.
Leaders, under pressure to deliver faster, latched onto these promises. Automation became a checkbox on performance reviews and project scorecards. Teams were told to automate everything, without being given time to reflect on what should actually be automated.
In short, we traded depth for appearance. We automated for automation’s sake.
And now, we are paying the price.
Chapter Three: Automation Is a Tool, Not the Craft
Automation is a tool. It is not the craft of testing.
The craft is in how you think. How you analyze risk. How you design tests. How you understand what matters to the user. How you question assumptions and uncover blind spots.
Automation helps scale that craft. It makes repeatable tasks faster. It gives rapid feedback on things that are stable and predictable. It frees up human testers to focus on exploration, investigation, and learning. But it can never do the thinking for you.
A great automation tester is not someone who just writes code. It is someone who understands why to automate, what to automate, and when not to automate. It is someone who can challenge the idea of blindly translating test cases into scripts and instead designs systems that provide meaningful, maintainable feedback.
Automation is not about coding everything. It is about coding the right things.
Chapter Four: The Danger of Automating Mediocrity
Here’s what that really means.
Most tests were never designed to be automated. They were designed to guide human exploration, prompt observation, and help a tester notice patterns and oddities. When you turn these into line by line automated scripts, you strip out the human intelligence and reduce them to brittle checklists.
You are not elevating your testing. You are industrializing mediocrity.
Even worse, you create a false sense of confidence. You see hundreds of passing scripts, but no one asks whether they are covering what matters. You create noise instead of signal. And when the system fails in production, everyone is shocked that the wall of green checkmarks did not prevent disaster.
We do not need more scripts. We need better thinking.
Chapter Five: Why Leaders Keep Falling for It
Why do leaders keep pushing for full automation, 100 percent coverage, or shiny low-code solutions?
Because it is easy to sell and even easier to misunderstand.
Leaders want speed. They want scale. They want predictability. Automation seems to promise all three. It is marketed as a force multiplier, a cost saver, and a competitive advantage.
But here’s the catch.
Automation only delivers those benefits when it is applied with surgical precision and deep understanding. When it is aligned to business risk. When it is part of a larger testing strategy. When the team knows what to automate and, just as importantly, what to leave alone.
Without that, automation becomes theater. A performance of progress that masks the erosion of real quality.
Chapter Six: How to Break the Spell
So, how do we break free?
It starts with courage. The courage to challenge the myths, reset expectations, and focus on what matters.
Here are five unapologetic steps testers, leaders, and teams can take:
1. Stop Automating Everything Not every test needs to be automated. Not every scenario adds value. Focus on stable, repeatable, high-value flows. Leave room for human exploration.
2. Shift the Conversation from Coverage to Risk Stop chasing 100 percent anything. Start mapping what matters to the business. Prioritize based on user impact, failure cost, and complexity.
3. Build for Maintainability, Not Just Speed A brittle suite is a ticking time bomb. Favor reliability over raw speed. Make sure your automation is resilient, readable, and easy to extend.
4. Educate Stakeholders Relentlessly Do not wait for management to figure it out. Teach them. Show them examples. Explain trade-offs. Push back on unrealistic demands.
5. Keep Testing Human Automation checks. People test. Never lose sight of the value that human testers bring. Curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking cannot be scripted.
Chapter Seven: The Mindset Shift We Need
What we need is not more automation.
What we need is smarter automation. Thoughtful automation. Purposeful automation.
We need testers who are not afraid to say no. Who can stand in a room and explain why automating a particular test is a waste of time. Who can help teams understand that a smaller, more focused suite is better than a bloated, brittle one.
We need leaders who measure outcomes, not activity. Who reward clarity over complexity. Who understand that automation is a journey, not a destination.
We need teams who value quality over theater. Who know that real progress comes from solving hard problems, not from inflating meaningless metrics.
Chapter Eight: What Happens When We Get It Right
When automation is done right, the impact is transformative.
Testers spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time on creative exploration. Developers get faster, more reliable feedback. Product owners gain clearer insights into product health. Customers experience fewer bugs, faster fixes, and smoother releases. Teams move with confidence, not just speed.
But none of this happens by accident.
It requires discipline. It requires skill. And most of all, it requires a relentless focus on value.
Automation is not the goal. Better software is.
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Drop the Illusion, Embrace the Craft
The time has come to stop pretending.
Stop pretending automation will save you if your fundamentals are broken. Stop pretending tools will fix problems that leadership will not address. Stop pretending more scripts equal more value.
The testers who will shape the future are the ones who embrace the craft, not just the code. They will be the ones who challenge assumptions, design smart solutions, and educate their teams. They will be the ones who automate for impact, not for applause.
So here is the challenge.
Raise the bar. Drop the illusion. Automate with purpose. Because the world does not need more button pushers. It needs quality leaders.
From Scripts to Strategy: Redefining the Role of the Automation Tester by Brijesh DEB
It’s Time to Stop Playing Small
The title “automation tester” has quietly become one of the most misunderstood and misused labels in the software world.
It is tossed around on resumes, stuffed into job descriptions, and plastered across LinkedIn profiles. Yet too often, it has been reduced to one narrow meaning: someone who writes scripts.
But here’s the hard truth.
Writing scripts is not a strategy. Running tools is not a strategy. Automating test cases line by line without asking why is not a strategy.
If all we expect from automation testers is the ability to code up prewritten cases, we have missed the point. Worse, we have set the bar pathetically low.
It is time to redefine what it means to be an automation tester. It is time to move beyond scripts and into strategy.
Chapter One: Why “Script Factory” Thinking Fails
Let’s start with the trap we have walked into.
Many organizations treat automation testers like script factories. The developers build the product, the manual testers write the cases, and the automation testers turn those cases into code. This assembly-line model looks neat on a flowchart. It feels productive because there is always a backlog to automate. And it gives the illusion of progress because the script count keeps going up.
But it fails. Every single time.
Why?
Because this model ignores the most important part of testing: thinking.
Scripts without thinking are noise. Scripts without strategy are overhead. Scripts without critical analysis are just digital wallpaper.
What happens in these environments?
This is not automation maturity. This is automation theater.
Chapter Two: What Real Automation Testers Do
So, what should automation testers actually do?
The best automation testers operate at three levels.
In short, real automation testers are not scriptwriters. They are architects of quality acceleration.
They are thinkers, not just coders.
Chapter Three: Elevating the Craft
If automation testers want to raise the bar, they need to step into five new behaviors.
1. Question before you code Before writing a single line, ask:
If you cannot answer those questions, stop.
2. Focus on value, not volume The number of automated scripts means nothing. Focus on automating the flows that:
Less can be more when it is targeted.
3. Design for change Write automation that is resilient. Build systems that tolerate product evolution. Avoid brittle selectors, magic waits, or overengineered frameworks. Good automation bends. Bad automation breaks.
4. Own the pipeline Understand CI/CD. Work with developers to integrate tests into the delivery flow. Visibility matters. Fast feedback matters. Automation sitting in a separate folder, run once a week, is dead on arrival.
5. Educate, advocate, and lead Automation testers are in a unique position to educate the team. Explain why some things should not be automated. Push back on “automate everything” mandates. Share insights about what the automation is revealing.
Great automation testers help teams think. Not just ship code.
Chapter Four: Breaking Old Habits
To elevate automation testing, we also need to break bad habits.
Bad habit 1: Automating everything by default Not all tests belong in automation. Low-value, highly volatile, rarely used paths often cost more to automate than they save.
Bad habit 2: Treating automation as a separate phase Automation should not trail behind development. It should walk alongside it. Test design, exploratory testing, and automation planning should happen early, not as an afterthought.
Bad habit 3: Obsessing over tools Tools are important, but they are not the answer. A team with a mediocre tool and excellent thinking will outperform a team with a world-class tool and shallow strategy every time.
Bad habit 4: Measuring the wrong things Number of scripts, lines of code, or automation percentage are vanity metrics. Focus on cycle time, defect detection rate, and team confidence.
Chapter Five: The Automation Tester as Strategic Partner
The best automation testers are not on the sidelines. They are strategic partners.
They work across roles, collaborating with:
They bridge gaps between technical execution and business goals.
They bring hard data and thoughtful insight into conversations.
They do not just automate tasks. They amplify intelligence.
Chapter Six: What Leaders Must Understand
For automation testers to thrive, leaders need to reset their expectations.
Here is what leaders should understand.
When leaders create space for automation testers to think, they unlock massive value.
When they reduce automation testers to script producers, they waste potential.
Chapter Seven: Building the Next Generation of Automation Testers
We need to prepare the next generation of automation testers to rise above the narrow, outdated definitions.
This means training them to:
It means teaching them that automation is not a checklist to complete but a craft to master.
It means helping them see themselves not as coders on a conveyor belt, but as leaders of quality acceleration.
Chapter Eight: Real Impact, Not Illusion
When automation testers shift from script to strategy, the impact is real.
This is what mature automation looks like.
It is not about the most scripts, the fastest execution, or the shiniest tool.
It is about the smartest application of automation to solve meaningful problems.
Step Into the Bigger Role
The automation tester role is ready for reinvention. We do not need people to be called button pushers. We do not need more job description driven coders. We do not need more teams automating mediocrity.
We need automation testers who are thinkers, architects, strategists, and leaders. We need people who challenge assumptions, design smart solutions, and keep the entire team honest about value.
So here is a different challenge.
If you are an automation tester, stop asking how many scripts you can write. Start asking what impact you can make. Stop chasing the next tool. Start mastering the craft. Stop waiting to be invited into the conversation. Step in. Speak up. Lead. Because when automation testers rise, teams rise.
And when teams rise, the product wins.