How do you work with dedicated QAs who only do automation?
I've been to several projects where they hire dedicated people to only automate tests. I'd like to know if I'm the only one who thinks this, or maybe we're not doing it right with them but I don't see the value.
These team members doesn't bother to understand the product. They just wait for manual testers to hand them off the test case, and they just follow it as it is.
My problem with this is:
They might not understand the intent of the test properly, what risks it protects us from, why we need the test
I don't believe that 1 manual test = 1 automated test. A manual functional test is written with a different goal and with assumptions that a human would intuitively understand. And some manual tests are too granular since we focus on asserting one thing or one goal. Whereas, for automation the granular part could fall under a unit/component test instead and the UI automation part would be more journey-based (rather than functional test cases, e2e test cases would apply more).
#1 make it difficult to trust them even when they say the test is done.
#2.1 just piles more work to the manual testers because my manager expects them to write separate e2e tests for the automation engineers to follow. but these manual testers won't know the best way it can be done as an automated tests.
#2.2 we lose the opportunity to discuss with developers how they the granular checks like making sure an error message shows when the field is blank should be covered by a unit test already, because the automation engineers just do it when they see a manual test for it and the manual testers didn't know about the concept of unit test
So for me, the right direction for a team is have someone who can do both manual and automation so they understand how to balance this with the understanding of the product.
Wdyt? Or are there just some gaps on our ways of working? How do you make it work with your team?