A huge change in the tester’s role in the modern agile environment is the amount of test automation that is now employed in development. Where previously testing would typically have been functional testing of end to end user scenarios, often using manual test scripts, now testing is mostly automated with test scripts written in a mainstream programming language and compiled to be run along with the code of the product itself.

For the 21st century tester to be an effective contributor they have to now be reasonably adept programmers, able to automate the tests they previously designed and scripted. This module introduces testers to the fundamentals of programming as needed for test automation. While it does not turn them into highly skilled developers, it does teach enough of the programming concepts to be able to author automated tests reliably, and to run them within an application test automation environment.

The module is presented using about 40% taught content, with the remainder of the course being hands-on practical activities creating test code, designing and executing the code, combined with small group activities based around understanding how to write test code that is fast, correct, and easy to maintain.

The programming language chosen for this module is Java with the testing framework being JUnit. However, the module can be presented in several versions depending on the language and toolkit used at work by the course attendees. Examples of alternative environments include Python and Pytest, C# and NUnit or xUnit.