Keep Your Automation Visible

You and your automation are only useful if people know what you're doing. It's always a good idea to make sure the tools and scripts you've created have as much visibility as any other testing activity going on. Otherwise, someday someone's going to say "Hey, what does [insertYourNameHere] do all day, anyway?"

Here are a few thoughts on how you can keep people from asking that question:

Demonstrate your tools. Show the test & dev teams what you're working on. Do it during a lunch & learn and let them see what you've done. People may suggest some ideas on how to improve what you've created. Others may realize they have a use for what you've created. Either way, you're keeping your team informed on what you've built and how it can benefit them.

Send out updates. Between demonstrations, jot off a quick note to your team when you've updated a tool or script and how it can benefit them. When they realize you've added the ability to test foreign languages, or you've made it easier to verify values have been written to the registry, they'll be excited and will put those enhancements to work right away.

Blow your own horn. I hate doing this, but sometimes it's necessary. Your management needs to know that what you're doing is worthwhile, so sometimes you have to send off a mail saying "Hey, that tool I wrote helped Carla find 10 bugs in an hour" or "The smoke test I wrote caught a bunch of problems before it went to the test team, which kept them from wasting their time on a broken build." Especially in these economic times, being invisible is not the way to go.

Solicit feedback. Communication is a two way street. Always ask your test team "How could this be better?" when they see you implemented requests they asked for, they'll be more vested in your tools, and more excited about using them.

What other methods have you used to increase automation's visibility?