Feasibility of test automation depends more on purpose, benefit, maintenance and cost than whether a test is a user acceptance test (UAT)
case or another type of test case. Review test cases considered for
automation by thinking through the shelf life of the test case (how
long will the test case be used) and whether test time and effort will
be saved by automating the case. Also ask yourself what benefit can be
gained by automating the case. Often the benefit of automating is being
able to test with a larger variety of data than could be accomplished
manually but this benefit may have to do with the fact that most
applications are mostly data-centric. The benefits you discover could
vary based on the type of applications you're working with.
Advantages of automating are that you can speak to the status of the
test cases after each execution. A disadvantage is that automation
never replaces a person's point of view or sense of comfort with a
system and the true meaning of user acceptance may be lost by
automating the test cases.
User acceptance cases are test cases usually created by users or
written by testers or business analysts after interviewing users for
the purpose of the users executing tests vs. automating the
test cases. It might be that the test cases created for user acceptance
are so practical and represent logical everyday usecases that
automating the test cases makes sense. But if a user acceptance test
case was automated, it should not be considered an user acceptance test
case anymore. The test case would become an automated case written used
to demonstrate system functionality.
If your situation is such that the users who are responsible to test
a system after each release are too busy to test after each build and
this is why you are considering automation, then there might be a
different issue that needs to be addressed. Perhaps the user community
is understaffed, or the expectations for user acceptance testing needs
to be adjusted or there might be some other issue that needs to be
understood and discussed versus automating to resolve an issue.
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