All software systems, from new developments to legacy systems, suffer from test automation backlogs, i.e., manual tests that stagnate the rate of development and innovation. I argue that such backlogs are really technical debt. I will provide a practitioner’s perspective on what the characteristics of such technical debt are. Through an analogy to financial debt, I will present approaches that are often resorted to in order to address such technical debt, which at first glance seem harmless but often lead to nightmares in practice. Many of these issues present research challenges that can have a significant impact on the practice of software development. The talk will be of benefit to both researchers and practitioners who want to avoid common pitfalls of technical debt removal in testing environments.

Valentin Guerlesquin is the director of test automation and performance testing at National Bank. He has been a software testing professional for more than 10 years. Guerlesquin has worked in several roles, including test environment management, manual functional testing, mobile, and testing process improvement. He is an ISTQB full advanced and TMMi certified professional. He has trained dozens of his peers in several organizations from telecom, to the aerospace industry, to finance.