Mastering Test Automation: Best Practices & Tips
QA Lead Engineer & authorDBDeep Barot
Founder, ContextQA (host)
How do you get maximum value from test automation? Drawing on 15 years of QA experience, this session covers building a full regression suite from scratch in six months, balancing manual and automated testing, and managing test cases, ROI, and maintenance over time.
Walk away knowing how to apply it
What the conversation covers
Building a full regression suite from zero in ~6 months as a proof of concept
Why automation projects stall: delivery pressure, not lack of desire
The in-Sprint workflow: manual first, automate sensible cases, use buffer days
Reviewing developers' unit tests to design complementary (not duplicate) tests
Making QA visible via trends: defects per release, pass/fail, a confidence vote
Test-case hygiene: group, delete redundant or always-passing tests
Versioning and maintenance to keep suites stable
The ideas worth remembering
Automating everything is impossible and counterproductive — always keep time for manual
A test that never fails in years no longer adds value; declutter ruthlessly
Make QA visible through metric trends over time, not absolute numbers
ROI is simple math: a day automating saves repeated days of manual every release
Automation will give you a lot of things, but you should always, always keep some time for manual work.— Panagiotis Leloudas
Who you'll hear from
Panagiotis Leloudas
QA Lead Engineer & author
Deep Barot
Founder, ContextQA (host)
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