有人建议测试人员对他们所有的测试用例都进行自动化。我很不赞成这种观点。因为很多黑盒测试被创建并运行仅仅一次，那么，要自动化这些一次性的测试，就会不得不在每一个测试上花费大量的时间和金钱。而同时，将不能运行大量测试。所以，为什么非要让每一个测试变得低覆盖率、高成本呢?
Second problem: this approach creates risks of additional costs. We all know that the cost of finding and fixing bugs increases over time. As a product gets closer to its (scheduled) ship date more people work with it, as in-house beta users or to create manuals and marketing materials. The later you find and fix significant bugs, the more of these people’s time will be wasted. If you spend most of your early testing time writing test scripts, you will delay finding bugs until later, when they are more expensive.
第二个问题：这种做法带来了额外开销的风险。我们都知道找到并修复bug的成本随时间而升高。当一个产品离它的计划发布时间更近时，就会有更多的人参与工作，比如，内部?测试用户以及制作用户手册和营销材料的人。因此，越晚找到并修复重大的bug，这些人被浪费的时间就越多。如果把先前大部分的测试时间都用在写测试脚本上，那么你将更晚发现bug，到时候付出的代价也会更大。
Third problem: these tests are not powerful. The only tests you automate are tests that the program has already passed. How many new bugs will you find this way? The estimates that I’ve heard range from 6% to 30%. The numbers go up if you count the bugs that you find while creating the test cases, but this is usually manual testing, not related to the ultimate automated tests.
第三个问题：这些测试并不强大。因为只有那些通过测试的程序才能进行自动化测试，而这样又会发现许多新的bug。我所知的估计值在6%至30%之间。而如果你在创建测试用例时就计算你所找出的bug,这个数值会变得更大。
Fourth problem: in practice, many test groups automate only the easy-to-run tests. Early in testing, these are easy to design and the program might not be capable of running more complex test cases. Later, though, these tests are weak, especially in comparison to the increasingly harsh testing done by a skilled manual tester.
第四个问题：实际上，许多测试团队只能对那些易于运行的测试进行自动化。测试初期，它们易于设计，而且程序也不能运行更复杂的测试用例。但到后来，这些测试变得失效，甚至还不如熟练的手工测试人员所设计的已经日益粗糙的测试有用。
Now consider maintainability:
对可维护性的思考
Maintenance requirements don’t go away just because your friendly automated tool vendor forgot to mention them. Two routinely recurring issues focused our discussion at the February LAWST meeting.
可维护性需求并没有因为友好的自动化工具提供商忘了提及它们而消失。以下是二月的LAWST会议上我们再次讨论的两个议题：
o When the program’s user interface changes, how much work do you have to do to update the test scripts so that they accurately reflect and test the program?
当程序用户界面改变时，为了正确反映并测试你的程序，你需要做多少更新测试脚本的工作?
o When the user interface language changes (such as English to French), how hard is it to revise the scripts so that they accurately reflect and test the program?
文章来源于领测软件测试网 https://www.ltesting.net/
