CTAL-TAE: Certified Tester Advanced Level Test Automation Engineering v2.0Demo

You have been recruited as a TAE by a large travel agency and are now responsible for a mature TAS dedicated to functional testing of the company’s booking system, covering flights, hotels, and packaged holidays. This application has a complex UI and substantial functionality. It is under continual maintenance and enhancement by an agile team that adds tests to the regression test suite at the end of every iteration.

The TAS supports structured scripting, implemented to a high standard with a well-managed script library and minimal code duplication. The TAA will not support more advanced scripting techniques. The test automation achieved so far was initially well received, but is now receiving increasing criticism. It is considered old-fashioned and poorly documented and, in particular:

1. The test-script maintenance overhead is becoming excessive because test analysts frequently want data values changed.
2. Test analysts complain that a new test similar to an existing one, except for data values, requires a new high-level script and that they must ask a technical test analyst to create it.
3. The nightly full regression run takes a long time, and there is a risk that it will soon exceed the available window as more tests are added.
4. Some tests fail frequently because of a slow response from the SUT.
5. Some transactions are difficult to verify because they depend on variables that cannot be seen through the SUT UI.
6. The TAF UI is difficult to learn.

Your new manager wants rapid improvements to address items 1, 2, and 3. She has accepted that the TAA may need enhancement to support those improvements.

Which TWO improvements would be BEST in this scenario?