Test data might be the biggest hurdle you have to overcome to achieve good and stable testing. Automation has a big role to play here and without some kind of automation we pretty much have to devote excessive resources to guarantee the integrity of the data.

In my mind this needs to (ideally) be addressed at the planning stages of a new product where you have to include QA and make a conscious push for testability in the product.

However, even if we design perfectly for testability we might STILL run into issues due to the nature of modern IT systems. These systems are often depending on third party services, API:s and databases and maintaining full and complete control of the entire system is probably not tenable.

How do you solve this? Some of it can be solved lower down in the test automation suite (the only product where you, the tester, yourself actually do have full control)

Other than this it’s wise for any IT organization to realize that IT systems ARE unpredictable and that in the very end (at least as of 2022) you simply DO need to have some kind of human touch or oversight, even in a world where automation is running rampant ;).