Who on your team owns the automated tests?

If the answer is "one person", that's a risk. Test automation is a team responsibility.

Try asking this at your next stand-up: who on our team is responsible for the automated tests?

If one name comes up, and usually one name comes up, you have a problem. Not with that person, with the setup.

Why one person is a risk

It's a familiar situation. There's one person who set up the test suite, who knows the framework, who knows why that one test is put together so strangely. It works, so nobody touches it.

Until that person goes on holiday, switches projects, or leaves. And then it turns out: the suite still runs, but nobody dares touch it. A test starts failing, and the team doesn't know if it's a real bug or a quirk of the framework. So that test gets disabled. And another. And another...

Within six months the suite is a fossil. It still runs, but it's no longer alive.

The deeper problem

The "one test automation engineer" setup says something about how a team views quality. It turns testing into a specialism that sits next to development work, instead of being part of it.

That has consequences beyond the bus-factor risk. Developers don't feel responsible for failing tests, because that's "QA's job". Tests get written after the code is done, instead of growing alongside it. And when the suite gets slow, that's someone else's problem.

How it should work

Test automation is a team responsibility. That doesn't mean everyone has to be equally good at writing tests, expertise can absolutely be unevenly spread. It means the responsibility is shared.

• Tests belong to the story. A feature isn't done without tests, and the team writes them, not one person afterward.
• Failing tests are everyone's problem. A red build means: we fix this, not: call the tester.
• Test code is code. It goes through code review, it has standards, it's maintained like the rest.
• The specialist coaches. If there is a test automation engineer, their role is to strengthen the team, not to take over the work.

The test you can run yourself

Ask your team: if our test expert is out for three weeks starting tomorrow, can we still release with confidence?

If your team hesitates to answer, you know where your work lies. And the good news: that work isn't more tests. It's spreading knowledge, and agreeing that quality belongs to everyone.