The crew was not supposed to believe that the automation would operate correctly - the purpose of the flight was to detect any maintenance-related glitches, including those that affected automation.
Sorry but this doesn't make any sense concerning this particular crash. Firstly, AOA sensors were not serviced, so even if the crew was looking for a glitch caused by maintenance they wouldn't expect it with AOA sensors.
Furthermore, if what you are saying is true, the pilots could very well expect the elevators, flaps, rudder or any other part of the plane to fail - who in their right mind would fly such a plane!?
or at least one pilot who could be trusted to follow the manufacturer's SOPs.
AFAIK a specific Airbus procedure for such a flight does not exist.
Think again.
The main cause was the crew attempting a stall manoever at low level and before that attempting a test flight without the proper precautions and briefings.
I am thinking again - and the fact is the first point of failure were the AOA sensors due to inproper maintenance/handling/washing. If the AOA sensors didn't fail this accident wouldn't have happened.
A very important factor was also that there was no sufficiant warning for the crew about this failure. I therefore conclude that crew errors only contributed to the fact that the aircraft was not performing "as advertised", and that most importantly the automatic switching of flight laws prohibited the auto-trim system to move from the nose up position - and this caused the second, fatal stall.