Thread by @FriendlyTester

Your automated checks need to be TRIMS...

T - Targeted
R - Reliable
I - Informative
M - Maintainable
S - Speedy

If they aren’t the above, go and TRIM them...

Targeted. Move them to a more targeted layer based on the risk and what you are trying to test. This will likely also help with reliability. If a check is big, break it up into smaller checks. This will also improve maintainability.

Informative. Targeted checks are more informative as it’s usually quicker to identify the failure, because you aren’t testing many things at once. Also you’ll be on a specific seam, so safe time debugging failures. Also the naming is clearly allowing faster feedback

Reliable. Whole point of checks is that they are reliable and deterministic, do the same thing over and over again until they detect a change.That’s what we want.When they are failing all the time due to poor implementation it’s reduces feedback loops and generates a lot of waste

Maintainable. Lots out there on this already. But whether is a gui based tool or code, we need to be utilising maintainability features. Abstracting code, reusing code/objects, informative error messages , easy configuration and much more

Speedy. We are seeking rapid feedback, if your checks aren’t doing that, they need improving. If they are failing randomly, taking too long to fix, to execute, that is increasing your feedback loop. Quick to execute, but hours to maintain, isnt as rapid feedback as it may seem.

Targeted. Remove duplicate tests. If you have overlap in checks, questions if all are needed. If not, delete some. I ❤️ deleting checks. this will result in faster execution and less checks to maintain.

Informative. Delete checks that aren’t bringing value. The ones that fail and everyone is like meh, ignore it, we’ll log a bug we’ll never fix. Delete it!
Checks that have no business value, where folk have automated a scenario because they can, without any real risk. Delete it!

Happy trimming.
You should trim your beard Richard.
Go away brain!
This is my, it’s to hot to do anything beard, deal with it!

This was created at part of #AutomationInTesting along with @2bittester