I'm going at this from the angle as a software tester, so my opinion might differ slightly. :)
Whenever we deploy a system or the whole chain, we do sanity checks manually to make sure our core components are not affected by the release. If they are, rollback and cry. It consumes a lot of time and we have testers that have to be at the ready at 3am or something for these tests...
However, when there are automated tests in place (which some of our systems have), we can use the CI/CD pipelines to trigger the sanity checks. No need for human interaction, and also a lower risk of human error.
The same goes for regression tests, which can be used in even more situations. Regression tests (closest to the unit test, but from a functional pov) can be run at any moment, after any change. So, whenever you're merging branches, you can always run the regression tests. Does everything still works like it's supposed to! Awesome! Do we have failed tests? Rollback and cry again (and of course analyse where that little bug is at).
I can keep going like this, but these are some of my main arguments when it comes to automated testing.
Oh, and one last argument: when you're unit testing your code, you reduce the chances of that one hecc of an annoying tester being at your desk time and time again. ;)
I'm going at this from the angle as a software tester, so my opinion might differ slightly. :)
Whenever we deploy a system or the whole chain, we do sanity checks manually to make sure our core components are not affected by the release. If they are, rollback and cry. It consumes a lot of time and we have testers that have to be at the ready at 3am or something for these tests...
However, when there are automated tests in place (which some of our systems have), we can use the CI/CD pipelines to trigger the sanity checks. No need for human interaction, and also a lower risk of human error.
The same goes for regression tests, which can be used in even more situations. Regression tests (closest to the unit test, but from a functional pov) can be run at any moment, after any change. So, whenever you're merging branches, you can always run the regression tests. Does everything still works like it's supposed to! Awesome! Do we have failed tests? Rollback and cry again (and of course analyse where that little bug is at).
I can keep going like this, but these are some of my main arguments when it comes to automated testing.
Oh, and one last argument: when you're unit testing your code, you reduce the chances of that one hecc of an annoying tester being at your desk time and time again. ;)
Do I have your permission to use this quote and your profile picture/info in my presentation?
Of course! Feel free to use it. ^^
Thanks for the different perspective, Rose! Rollback and cry was cracking me up 😂 I'm going to use that from now on!