There is an important principle when working on any automation, including automated tests. The costs should not exceed the benefits.

I’ll talk about the many benefits of automated tests, some of them non-obvious and far-reaching. However, there are also significant costs and difficulties associated with writing, maintaining and executing them. I will discuss these challenges and provide suggestions to address and reduce them.

I’ll try to convince those who don’t write tests that they might be missing out on a wonderful way to write better software faster. For those who maintain 100% coverage on every project I’ll provide some thoughts to challenge the practice. Regardless of which group you belong to, this presentation will provide good feeling and confirmation, pushback and food for thought as well as specific tips and tricks from the Python frameworks and tools ecosystem.