Test-drive a thin AAT framework, taylored to your application
Automated Acceptance Tests (AAT) can provide huge value, and can automate time-consuming tasks like regression testing, but aren't easy to scale. Have you tried implementing them only to abandon them later? Are they fragile? Do they give a lot of false positives? Do they take more time to write than the value you're getting out of them? These are common problems with automated acceptance testing, but there are ways to mitigate these issues. One great way is to create a very thin automation framework that helps you write the tests faster while reducing the fragility.
This is a thin automation framework, produced with a test-driven approach yielding a framework appropriate for the software being tested (amazon.com in this case). The resulting tests are very clean and readable, and they become faster and faster to write as the framework evolves. C# and Selenium are used but the concepts are applicable to other languages and browser automation frameworks. There are also approaches used that reduce the fragility and maintenance costs of the tests.
*NOTE: this was created for a demo, thus the multiple versions of the solution. Here are the slides,
http://www.slideshare.net/wynvandevanter/create-a-maintainable-automated-acceptance-test-framework