When 90% Test Automation Is Not the Goal: What I Learned From a QA Transformation Program
Andrey is a Delivery and Program Management leader with 15+ years of experience in technology, leading complex digital transformation, cloud, data, and AI initiatives for global organizations.
In one large-scale quality assurance modernization program, we had what appeared to be a clear transformation objective: significantly increase automated test coverage, modernize the testing stack, reduce regression effort, and introduce AI-assisted capabilities into the quality engineering process.
The roadmap was structured. The technology direction was clear. Automation coverage could be measured. Migration progress could be reported. From a traditional project governance perspective, these were exactly the kinds of indicators we knew how to manage.
But there was a more important question: Were we actually making software delivery faster and more reliable?
That question changed how I looked at the program.
The Problem With Measuring Transformation Through Output
Transformation programs naturally gravitate toward metrics that are easy to report.
In a QA modernization initiative, those might include:
- percentage of test cases automated
- number of automated tests created
- number of legacy tests migrated
- framework implementation progress
- milestone completion
- defects identified
- execution success rates
All of these metrics are useful.
The problem is that none of them, individually, tells us whether the transformation is delivering its intended business outcome.
- A team can automate thousands of test cases and still have a slow …
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"Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers." - Voltaire |
