This chapter is completely wrong
If you took a stopwatch and looked at what a skilled tester does, actually executing the test is only a small portion of the job. As mentioned previously, test execution automation doesn’t include test design. Test design, however, can be assisted with tools. The consultant Michael Bolton recently wrote about ways to automate parts of the test design process (https://developsense.com/blog/2023/01/test-tools).
In test design, we use tools to help us achieve the following:
- Produce test data [tools like spreadsheets (why are some testers so eager to diss Excel? It’s like a Swiss Army knife for testing); state-model generators; Monte Carlo simulations; random number generators].
- Obfuscate or cleanse production data for privacy reasons (data shufflers; name replacers), generate interesting combinations of parameters (all-pairs or combinatorial data generators), and generate flows through the product that cover specific conditions...
