Why Your Automation Technique Might Be Falling Behind
In case your QA staff remains to be spending hours writing web page objects, check locators, and knowledge factories by hand, you’re already behind.
Generative AI is reshaping check automation at a staggering tempo, slashing coding duties from hours to minutes, and enabling engineers to provide 3–5x extra high-quality code per dash.
However whereas the hype round AI in QA is in all places, few leaders know methods to separate shiny “magic options” from sensible enterprise worth.
That’s the place Ben Fellows is available in.
Meet Ben Fellows
Ben Fellows is the founding father of a QA companies firm and a main voice on LinkedIn within the AI-powered QA motion.
With years of expertise serving to QA groups implement Playwright and AI-driven automation, Ben has skilled business leaders like Jim Hazen and Butch Mayhew via his hands-on workshops.
His focus?
Serving to QA leaders lower via noise and apply AI the place it straight accelerates supply, reduces prices, and boosts staff productiveness.
Free Playwright with AI Course
1. Use AI as a Productiveness Booster, Not a Silver Bullet
In keeping with Ben, too many distributors are promoting “AI brokers that do all of your testing for you.”
Whereas flashy, these options are gradual, costly, and never production-ready.
As a substitute, the true worth at present is augmented coding—utilizing AI to generate the identical high-quality code your engineers would usually write, solely quicker.
- Instance: Writing a Playwright web page object mannequin that used to take 3–4 hours now takes 20 minutes or much less with AI.
- Enterprise final result: Groups can ship options quicker, scale back backlog strain, and preserve tempo with accelerated growth cycles.
2. Rethink QA Roles within the Age of AI
As AI instruments velocity up code era, the bottleneck has shifted. QA leaders are now not struggling to provide sufficient code—they’re struggling to overview code at scale.
Ben notes that some firms are rebalancing their org charts:
- Fewer engineers centered on uncooked coding
- Extra emphasis on reviewers, architects, and check strategists
This shift requires QA managers to rethink job descriptions, efficiency metrics, and staff constructions.
3. Give attention to Excessive-Worth, Tedious Duties First
Need to get began?
Don’t goal for moonshots. Ben recommends making use of AI to repetitive, pattern-based duties that drain engineering hours:
- Web page Objects: Mechanically generate a whole lot of locators and strategies with accuracy charges above 80%
- Knowledge Factories: Feed AI your schema and let it produce check knowledge factories in minutes.
- API Insights: Level AI at an endpoint and get the article form, dependencies, and even higher Swagger documentation.
By focusing on these tedious duties first, QA leaders can rapidly exhibit ROI and achieve buy-in from skeptical stakeholders.
4. Spend money on Premium Fashions and Guardrails
Not all AI is created equal. Ben warns that outcomes range dramatically relying on the mannequin. Groups utilizing low-cost or outdated fashions usually dismiss AI prematurely as a result of outputs are poor.
Greatest practices:
- Funds $200–$250 per engineer/month for premium fashions like Claude or GPT-5.
- Use Cursor guidelines/templates to implement coding requirements throughout your staff.
- At all times overview and debug AI-generated code—the purpose is acceleration, not blind belief.
5. Put together for the Subsequent Wave: Picture-Primarily based Testing
Looking forward to 2026, Ben predicts a shift away from DOM-based automation towards image-based or natural-language testing.
Think about instructing an AI: “Log in, navigate to the dashboard, and validate formatting matches the design.” The AI evaluates the web page visually—identical to an actual person—eradicating the necessity for brittle locators and assertions.
Whereas that is nonetheless costly and gradual at present, the know-how is bettering rapidly. QA leaders ought to begin experimenting now to keep away from being blindsided.
Actionable Takeaways for QA Leaders
Right here’s methods to begin making use of these insights in your staff:
- Run a POC with premium AI fashions (Claude, GPT-5) utilizing Cursor or Copilot
- Goal tedious duties first—web page objects, locators, and knowledge factories.
- Shift your staff combine towards reviewers and strategists, not simply coders.
- Set guardrails with templates and coding guidelines to make sure consistency.
- Discover future developments like Playwright MCP and image-based testing, however don’t guess the farm but.
Closing Ideas
AI received’t change nice testers—it’ll amplify one of the best ones. By adopting augmented coding at present, you’ll be able to free your staff from repetitive drudgery, speed up supply, and put together for the following wave of AI-driven automation.
To dive deeper, try the total episode of the TestGuild Automation Podcast with Ben Fellows—together with stay demos of AI writing 500+ traces of production-ready Playwright code in minutes.