Test Automation Strategy

<default_to_action> When designing or improving test automation:

1. DETECT anti-patterns: Ice cream cone? Slow suite? Flaky tests?
2. USE patterns: Page Object Model, Builder pattern, Factory pattern
3. INTEGRATE in CI/CD: Every commit runs tests, fail fast
4. MANAGE flaky tests: Quarantine, fix, or delete - never ignore

Quick Anti-Pattern Detection:

• Ice cream cone (many E2E, few unit) → Invert to pyramid
• Slow tests (> 10 min suite) → Parallelize, mock external deps
• Flaky tests → Fix timing, isolate data, or quarantine
• Brittle selectors → Use data-testid, semantic locators </default_to_action>

Quick Reference Card

When to Use

• Building new automation framework
• Improving existing test efficiency
• Reducing flaky test burden
• Optimizing CI/CD pipeline speed

Anti-Patterns to Detect

Problem	Symptom	Fix
Ice cream cone	80% E2E, 10% unit	Invert pyramid
Slow suite	30+ min CI	Parallelize, prune
Flaky tests	Random failures	Quarantine, fix timing
Coupled tests	Order-dependent	Isolate data
Brittle selectors	Break on CSS change	Use data-testid

---

CI/CD Integration

name: Test Pipeline
on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  unit-tests:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npm run test:unit -- --coverage
        timeout-minutes: 5
      - uses: codecov/codecov-action@v3

  integration-tests:
    needs: unit-tests
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    services:
      postgres:
        image: postgres:15
    steps:
      - run: npm run test:integration
        timeout-minutes: 10

  e2e-tests:
    needs: integration-tests
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - run: npx playwright test
        timeout-minutes: 15

---

Flaky Test Management