Ideal test automation process or the full story about test pyramid (Mikalai Alimenkou, Ukraine)

Working in many companies as consultant, delivery manager or tech lead I have always seen the same mistakes made in test automation process. I could count successful cases on fingers of one hand. Sometimes people don’t understand the true value of test automation, sometimes just could not organize this process spending lots of money and time without any significant result. I want to share 5 top mistakes aggregated from whole my practice and solutions I recommend for them. Everybody knows about test pyramid. It is always used on slides about test automation and presented on different conferences. But understanding test pyramid and its layers is not enough. There are more important questions: “how to find right balance for particular project?”, “how to build this pyramid from scratch for already running project?”, “what to do if you are limited in time and resources?”, “how to measure if your pyramid is good enough?”. In this talk I will bring some more “secret ingridients” on the table to make test pyramid co