Chapter 20. What?

Chapter 20. What!?!!

Yes we said, "No manual tests." All acceptance tests on an Extreme Programming project must be automated.

We could just say that and go on with the book. It's tempting. But if we did that, some of you wouldn't take it seriously, and you'd end up with a bunch of manual tests. Don't go there. On an Extreme Programming project, a manual test may be worse than no test at all. On our XP road trip, manual testing might lead us to a misadventure similar to that of the aforementioned Donner Party.

In this chapter, we're going to explain our stance on test automation. In the following few chapters, we're going to talk about various avenues we could take to automate our tests. Your team can consider the various options we present and adopt the ones that will help you on your own journey.

Do cases ever arise where you wouldn't automate a test? Our experience is that, indeed, we could have a valid reason not to automate a test. We might also find exploratory manual testing worthwhile. However, our experience is that acceptance-test automation isn't taken seriously, and XP teams can end up with way too many manual tests. Take it from us: this doesn't work.

When you start doing Extreme Programming, you must master all the practices defined in the Extreme Programming literature. Once you've mastered them, you may customize them if you have good reason. The practice of automating all your acceptance tests is no different. Start by automating 100% of the tests. Once you've mastered test automation, and only then, you may find a good reason to do manual testing.

Does this sound really scary? Is your reaction, "Oh, great, I can't do XP then, because I don't know how to automate tests"?

Don't worry, we're not going to just say, "Automate all the tests" and leave it to you to figure out how to do it. The following chapters will walk you through it. Work through our examples and exercises and you'll be ready to try it in a real project, with the help of your team.

What if your reaction is, "I'm totally onboard with this idea, but my team doesn't understand why we should automate the acceptance tests. They think it'll take too long and won't be worth the effort"? We're going to give you the information to help you help them see the light and provide you with a means of automating that's palatable to the programmers on your team. Meanwhile, let's look at some reasons why we don't want manual tests.