  The software industry has seen an increasing interest in test automation. In
this paper, we present a test automation maturity survey serving as a
self-assessment for practitioners. Based on responses of 151 practitioners
coming from above 101 organizations in 25 countries, we make observations
regarding the state of the practice of test automation maturity: a) The level
of test automation maturity in different organizations is differentiated by the
practices they adopt; b) Practitioner reported the quite diverse situation with
respect to different practices, e.g., 85\% practitioners agreed that their test
teams have enough test automation expertise and skills, while 47\% of
practitioners admitted that there is lack of guidelines on designing and
executing automated tests; c) Some practices are strongly correlated and/or
closely clustered; d) The percentage of automated test cases and the use of
Agile and/or DevOps development models are good indicators for a higher test
automation maturity level; (e) The roles of practitioners may affect response
variation, e.g., QA engineers give the most optimistic answers, consultants
give the most pessimistic answers. Our results give an insight into present
test automation processes and practices and indicate chances for further
improvement in the present industry.
