Machiavellian Automation

I spoke with a colleague recently about a company whose automated test efforts had suddenly stopped. They had been using a third party resource for all their automated testing, and the money for that resource had dried up. As such, automated test development stopped, and no one in house had the knowledge or expertise to pick up the effort.

This reminded me of something I'd read in Machiavelli's The Prince. Machiavelli argued that princes should not rely on mercenaries or auxiliaries, and instead should rely on their own people. Some of that applies here as well. I think it's great if you want to jump start or augment your efforts by bringing in third party resources, but you need to be building up your own people as well. Sooner or later, that outside resource will be unavailable, either due to funding on your part, or lack of time on theirs. If you've built up your own team so that they can take the effort over, you'll have a smooth transition and no lost time or effort. If you haven't, your people will be scrambling to figure out how the automation works, and you'll waste time and money.

So make the investment in your people. Send them to training, buy them books, encourage them to learn. The end result will be in house expertise, which will make all your efforts smoother in the long run.