Despite the widespread understanding of API’s role in efficient testing, many teams still prioritize UI test automation over API testing. This misplaced focus creates fragile, maintenance-heavy test suites that fail to deliver reliable results. Leadership, automation engineers, and product managers often reinforce these practices by tracking ineffective metrics that measure the quantity rather than the impact of automated tests.
This cycle often begins with teams investing heavily in UI automation, only to find themselves struggling to maintain it as the product evolves. Maintaining these brittle UI automation scripts quickly becomes a project in itself, consuming time and resources while delivering diminishing returns. Teams end up “busy being busy,” chasing short-term goals instead of driving real value through automation.
In this talk, we will explore how shifting to an API-First mindset can transform your testing strategy. With API testing, teams can automate up to 75% of their test coverage faster and more reliably than with UI automation. However, a lack of API skills and limited awareness prevents organizations from realizing these benefits.
Talk Takeaways
A graduate of Problem Solving Leadership, BBST Courses by AST, Rapid Software Testing, Rapid Testing Intensive workshop, Lean Software Testing Workshop, Ajay Balamurugadas doesn’t hesitate to spend on his learning. Starting his career as a software tester, he continues to be a hands-on software tester along with training new testers, meeting testers in person, presenting at conferences, conducting workshops and sharing his thoughts through his blog and tweets.
Ajay started with testing standalone desktop applications and soon moved on to web applications and mobile applications. His journey was boosted by co-founding Weekend Testing (www.weekendtesting.com), Test Maniac and collaborating with The Test Tribe community (https://www.thetesttribe.com). His short books are popular with many testers for the practical, ready to use tips. You can check them out at https://bit.ly/ajleanpub and https://bit.ly/booksaj
He associates most of his learning to the Context-Driven testing community.
