Mistake 9: Not Using Debugging Tools
Your test fails.
You stare at the code.
You change something.
Run again.
Fail.
Change something else.
Run again.
Stop doing this.
Playwright provides excellent debugging capabilities.
Try:
npx playwright test --debug
You can also use:
npx playwright test --headed
And use Playwright Trace Viewer to investigate failures.
A trace can help you understand:
- What action was performed
- Which locator was used
- What the page looked like
- Network activity
- Console information
- Timing
Beginner Rule
Don’t just fix failures.
Learn why the failure happened.
That will make you a much stronger automation engineer.
Mistake 10: Treating Automation Like Manual Testing
This is perhaps the biggest mistake.
A beginner may think:
“I’ll automate exactly what I manually tested.”
But automation requires a different mindset.
Manual testing asks:
“What should I test?”
Automation also asks:
“How can I make this test reliable, reusable, maintainable, and fast?”
For example, instead of repeatedly creating test data manually through the UI, you might use an API to create the data before the test.
Instead of logging in through the UI for every test, you might reuse authenticated state.
Instead of repeating locators, you create reusable Page Objects or components.
The real goal
Don’t simply automate manual steps.
Build a reliable system for validating software.