Often in automation, tools and frameworks are presented as The Solution to our problems. But once we start using them, we realize there are plenty of challenges which arise, for which there is no solution implemented in a tool, or posted on Stackoverflow. These are the interesting problems that require our brains to kick in. The things which make programming and testing fun and challenging. However, if we don’t know how to approach them, they may become frustrating. So I’d like to share a few ways in which we can tackle these challenges. How to reason in order to search for appropriate solutions and implement them.
I’ll show you 3 such challenges in different contexts, and solutions I found for them:

• Injecting test steps at various points of Appium tests
• Creating automated tests for hardware connected to a Raspberry pi
• Implementing a Selenium library which minimizes variation at screen change

Key takeaways:
No matter the technology or tool, we can learn how to solve automation challenges by

• pinpointing the issues,
• modelling the problems,
• and understanding relevant aspects of the systems we work with.