Tell me more about building automation from scratch

Building test automation from scratch begins with analyzing requirements and understanding exactly what needs to be automated. It is important to define automation goals: speeding up regression, increasing coverage, reducing manual labor.

Next, select tools and technologies suitable for the project stack and tasks (e.g., Selenium, Cypress, Appium, JUnit, TestNG, Cucumber, etc.).

Main steps:

1. Designing the test architecture — creating folder structures, dividing into levels (unit, integration, UI), choosing patterns (Page Object, Screenplay).
2. Environment setup — CI/CD integration, configuring test data, environments.
3. Developing basic utilities and libraries — logging, reports, error handling.
4. Writing initial tests — covering critical scenarios.
5. Optimization and maintenance — refactoring, adding new tests, monitoring stability.

Example: for a web application, you can start with setting up Selenium WebDriver, writing basic Page Object classes, then implementing tests on JUnit with Allure reports, and integrating execution into Jenkins for automatic runs on commits.