State

One thing to remember with UI automation is that your application needs to be in the same state each time the test starts. You need to be on the right screen, with the right options enabled, and your test goes from there. This makes perfect sense to me, but I'm amazed at the people who get frustrated with that. They say "The tool should just know."

Now I agree that it's good to build logic into your tests that can get you onto the right screen if you aren't there already. It's also good to build recovery scenarios into your tests so you can get back to a good state if something goes wrong. However, to assume that the tool is just going to know what to do is ludicrous. The computer is a stupid box. You are the one with the brains. You tell the box what to do and it does it.

Come on, do you really want Skynet running your test efforts?