Testing & Change for Automation

Automations must be safe to change and easy to prove. Build a layered test strategy, ship with controlled releases, and keep a rollback you can execute in minutes. Use the same facts for daily operations and audit—no parallel logic.

Overview

Automation runs in production and touches money, customers, and controls. Treat it like any other system: build a layered test strategy, release in small steps, and keep a rollback you can run in minutes. Use one source of truth for both operations and audit—no side files and no second logic path.

Test strategy (layers)

Unit

Pure functions, rules, and transforms. Cheap, fast, isolated.

Integration & contract

Verify API shapes, enums, requiredness, and error codes. Consumer-driven contracts catch schema drift before prod.

End-to-end

System flow with real identities, time zones, and evidence. Keep small and stable; don’t test everything here.

Contracts: OpenAPI, Pact (consumer-driven contracts).

Test data & environments

Data rules

  • Stable IDs; deterministic fixtures; anonymized PII
  • Golden datasets for critical paths and edge cases
  • Clock control (UTC baseline; business hours when relevant)

Environments

  • Dev: fast feedback; mocks/stubs allowed
  • Test/UAT: contract tests; near-real integrations
  • Pre-prod: production-like data volumes; final perf/smoke

UI automation

  • W3C WebDriver compatible; stable selectors
  • Headless where possible; avoid fragile timing sleeps

Spec: W3C WebDriver.

Regression & reliability

Keep it green

  • Run unit + contract on every change
  • Daily smoke for end-to-end; alert on red
  • Pin external dependencies; mock where unstable

Data checks

  • Schema conformity and null/enum checks on pipelines
  • Profiling and drift alerts on key fields

References

Release strategies (blue/green, canary, flags)

Blue/green & canary

  • Blue/green: two prod stacks; switch traffic; instant rollback
  • Canary: small % first; watch SLOs; expand stepwise

Feature flags

  • Toggle by user/region; kill switch for risk
  • Expire flags; remove dead code

References

RPA-specific testing

Selectors & surfaces

  • Prefer stable selectors and accessibility trees
  • Version-lock UIs; alert on DOM changes
  • Small surface area per bot; avoid sprawling flows

Test pyramid for RPA

  • Rule/unit tests for transforms
  • API/contract tests where possible
  • Minimal UI end-to-end smoke

Reference

IEEE 2755 (RPA vocabulary and scope): standards.ieee.org

Workflow & AI testing

Workflow

  • BPMN path coverage; timers, escalations, compensation
  • DMN tables unit-tested; CMMN for case variants

Specs: BPMN · DMN · CMMN

AI/LLM

  • Offline evals: accuracy, groundedness, red-team prompts
  • Online: override rate, safety flags, approval latency
  • Guardrails: retrieval from approved sources, schema validation, logging

Refs: NIST AI RMF · OWASP Top-10 for LLM

Security & compliance

Auth & contracts

OAuth 2.0 / OIDC; strict input validation; idempotent writes. OpenAPI/GraphQL contracts in CI.

Change control

Standard/Normal/Emergency changes with approvals and rollback. Release windows for risky flows (ITIL/COBIT).

Evidence

Immutable logs (who/what/when); retention; link tests to controls and SOPs.

Refs: OpenAPI · RFC 6749 · COBIT · ITIL.

Monitoring, SLOs & rollback

Observability

  • Distributed tracing; correlation IDs
  • SLIs: latency, error rate, saturation, retries
  • Dashboards with SLOs and error budgets

Refs: OpenTelemetry · Google SRE

Rollback fast

  • Document a kill switch for bots, workflows, and flags
  • Blue/green or canary to reverse in minutes
  • Runbooks with owners, commands, and verification steps

90-day starter

Days 0–30

  • Publish a test pyramid and contract testing in CI
  • Define rollback and runbooks; pick release strategy

Days 31–60

  • Add blue/green or canary; wire tracing and SLOs
  • Stabilize selectors for any RPA; minimize UI tests

Days 61–90

  • Automate smoke/regression; enforce contract gates
  • Pilot one change; publish deltas and lessons

References

Ship changes with proof—and a rollback you can execute in minutes.

If you want a release/runbook kit (contracts, canary, SLOs, rollback), ask for a copy.

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