What is Automation in Testing?

Automation in Testing, or AiT for short, is a namespace created by Richard Bradshaw and Mark Winteringham.

Automation in Testing (AiT) is a mindset and namespace that promotes human-centric automation within the context of testing. AiT focuses on the strategy, creation, usage and education of valuable automation that truly supports our testing activities.

Richard first muttered the words ‘Automation in Testing’ during a podcast with Mark Tomlinson back in 2014. After recording the podcast, the host Mark asked Richard for a title, and he simply couldn’t come up with one. Mark made several suggestions all with ‘Test Automation’ in them, but to Richard, it wasn’t about test automation, it was about automation. After some pondering, Richard declared it should be called Automation in Testing because everything he had spoken of what about using automation to support his testing efforts. He’s continued to talk about AiT since then.

Over the years, this rearranging of words gained more traction. Richard continued to write and talk about how he was using automation to support his testing outside of automated checks. Others started referencing Richard’s work, as well as adopting the terminology themselves.

One of those was Mark Winteringham. Mark and Richard first met on the Rapid Software Testing course back in 2013, but it was a few years after that they started working together. Mark made a name for himself with his work on API/Web Services testing and has since gone onto to become a well-respected individual in the testing community. However, it was their mutual love of automation that lead to them working together.

Since 2016 Mark and Richard have been working together, collating all their thoughts on automation, challenging each others thinking and that of the industries. Finally, in 2018, we are in a position to start sharing our work under the umbrella of Automation in Testing. A namespace dedicated to our work on automation, in the context of testing.

We won’t be telling people their thinking is wrong, their methods are wrong that is not of interest to us, that is not a goal of ours. Instead, we aim to create a centralised collection of our collective thinking. We’ll be doing this by regularly blogging on this domain, as well our doing various public events. Talks and tutorials at conferences, public training classes and in-house private training.

This is the start of a great chapter in the work of Mark and Richard, we hope we bring some real value to the community.