Automating every manual test case is the most common way a QA automation effort fails. The suite grows slow and brittle, and the team stops trusting it. Selection is the first skill.
Start from risk and change
Automate checks that protect revenue paths, that cover code changing often, and that would be tedious to repeat by hand every release. A checkout flow qualifies; a rarely edited legal footer does not.
Match the test to the layer
Business logic belongs in unit tests. Service behaviour belongs in API tests. Only the handful of journeys that genuinely span the whole product need browser or device automation.
Leave room for exploration
Automation confirms what you already expect. Exploratory testing by a human finds what nobody anticipated. A strategy that removes exploratory time is weaker, not more efficient.
Action step
List the ten most important user journeys in your product. For each, note the layer where an automated check would catch a break earliest and mark those you would not automate at all.
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