Hard agree. (2) is all about building out the test suite; once you have this (3) becomes a cake walk.
I've worked in a lot of places where end to end testing is performed manually by a SIT team who absolutely do not like to re-run a test once it's been passed. These people hate the idea of (3) and will overestimate the costs to the PM in order to avoid having to do it.
I've worked in a lot of places where end to end testing is performed manually by a SIT team who absolutely do not like to re-run a test once it's been passed. These people hate the idea of (3) and will overestimate the costs to the PM in order to avoid having to do it.