Bug bashes shouldn’t be necessary when you have automated testing
I actually address that in the post. In short, automated testing is of course useful and should be utilized whenever possible. However, a manual bug bash still allows you to:
1. catch any unknown edge cases that may not be covered by your test suite
2. allow all stakeholders in the project to see the (near) final product
The near-finished product comment makes sense. So many times the engineers cut corners and don’t actually implement the real designs.