Develop testing routines or procedures
Most of the output can be produced by software today.
Producing the draft is the single thing current models are best at, and it needs no integration at all: a prompt and a couple of reference documents are enough. A person still edits it and takes responsibility for what goes out.
| How automatable | Mostly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Drafting and content production |
| Jobs that do it | 11 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Generalist agents, Builders |
| O*NET activity | Drafting, Laying Out, and Specifying Technical Devices, Parts, and Equipment (4.A.3.b.2) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 11 occupations that perform it.
- Develop, document, and revise system design procedures, test procedures, and quality standards.
- Develop and write procedures for installation, use, or troubleshooting of communications hardware or software.
- Create plans, test files, and scripts for data warehouse testing, ranging from unit to integration testing.
- Develop or direct software system testing or validation procedures, programming, or documentation.
- Design test plans, scenarios, scripts, or procedures.
- Develop, validate, and document test routines and schedules to ensure that test cases mimic external interfaces and address all browser and device types.
- Create gameplay test plans for internal and external test groups.
- Develop testing routines and procedures.
- Write, review, or execute plans for testing new or established document management systems.
- Develop and execute tests that simulate the techniques of known cyber threat actors.
- Develop and qualify new testing methods.
- Develop testing programs that address areas such as database impacts, software scenarios, regression testing, negative testing, error or bug retests, or usability.
- Evaluate testing routines or procedures for adequacy, sufficiency, and effectiveness.
- Develop infiltration tests that exploit device vulnerabilities.
- Plan test schedules or strategies in accordance with project scope or delivery dates.
- Develop security penetration testing processes, such as wireless, data networks, and telecommunication security tests.
- Update automated test scripts to ensure currency.
- Design or develop automated testing tools.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for drafting and content production, and what it costs.
Drafting needs no tools, no integration and no platform. One $20 assistant and two reference documents beat any agent builder here, and every extra thing in this stack is cost with nothing behind it.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Generalist agents
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
11 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Develop operational or technical procedures or standards”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.