Hands down, the best title of the conference :).As someone who is knee-deep in the process of revamping an automation framework at my company, this is very timely and understandable. Too often, we throw testers into the role of being an automation engineer with perhaps little to know real programming experience. Suffice it to say that having software testers' first programming project be producing a testing framework does not necessarily guarantee failure but it is certainly going to be a frustrating endeavor, no matter how we go about it.
Juan Delgado and Isaac Mende have written a paper that goes into depth about creating a formal and mature process for developing a framework. They lead off with the comment that failed automation efforts are too common and in many cases, a lack of guidance and understanding of principles is to blame.
Their examples use what is called the “UP Automation Framework”. This set of libraries has been developed by students of Artificial Intelligence engineering at “The University Panamericana campus Aguascalientes” (I think this may be the Aguascalientes my great-grandmother's family is from; its proximity to Mazatlan is the reason I think that to be the case. Not apropos of anything, it just brings a smile to my face :) ).
Juan and Isaac make the point that an automation framework is just as deserving of a development methodology as any project. This gets repeated often but I think it deserves repeating. For an automation project to be successful, it needs to be given a similar level of focus and attention as the min product software development. It can't be seen as an afterthought or as a "nice to have" project.
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