Welcome to the 123rd issue!

Do you know much about testing blockchain?

Because I don't.

Luckily, there's a Blockchain Roadmap for Test Engineers.

Oleksandr Romanov started writing a series of articles on this topic and I'm excited to learn more about it.

Hope you'll find it helpful, too.

Happy testing!

Dawid Dylowicz

Lewis Prescott lists out the challenges that testers may face in startups and advises on how to navigate and build a team in such an environment.

One of the things that may also help is Building a QA Competency Framework for each level, as Robbie Falck suggests.

Aziz Souabni wrote a practical, step-by-step guide to implementing a QA strategy and improving the quality standards of your application.

Related to that, Adam Fanello cleverly explains Software Testing Strategies to non-developers.

Over the past few weeks, Angela Riggs put together an insightful series of five articles about managing metrics, including some practical advice. You can read the following parts here: part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5.

Focusing only on testing the happy paths is rarely enough. Brian Hamilton explains the importance of negative testing and shares a few examples of useful techniques.

Becoming a senior doesn't necessarily require deep technical skills. Sérgio Martins explains the importance of impact, perception, visibility, and other characteristics that can help you get to the next level.

You might also be interested in reading Ryan Craven's 7 Habits of a Successful Software Tester, as well as the 11 Traits of a Senior QA Engineer.

How many of these CI/CD questions can you answer? Tomas Fernandez put together a big list that can help you assess your knowledge.

Similarly, Eze Onukwube gives a great overview of the CI/CD Pipeline — What Is It and Why Is It Important.

Anthony Manning-Franklin explains how using the Google approach to categorising tests can with functional Domain-Driven Design.

Moreover, Gergely Orosz posted a surprising overview of the Engineering Culture at Meta.

Testing Android apps? You might be interested in Gaurav Singh's great guide on how to use Google's framework — Espresso.

Here you can read part 2: working with lists and part 3: working with intents.

If you're looking to get started with test automation, Dennis Gurock wrote a comprehensive guide that can help you get started.

Furthermore, Rahul Parwal shares some practical tips on Learning Automation Skills as a Tester.

There are a few popular tools that allow an easy start with API testing. Carla Pérez shares a detailed guide to Insomnia and compares it to a couple of other tools.

Also, you may want to learn from Team Merlin about Automating API tests the effortless way using Postman.

Playwright has some cool features allowing you to make dynamic fixtures. Here's a handy guide by Haris Saleem on how to use it in various ways.

A good complementary read to that is Wagner Salustiano's article on How to use Playwright Fixtures to improve your testing code.

Do you know how many types of test tools are there? Quite a lot, it turns out. In this article, Iryna Suprun takes a closer look at the observability tools.

Note: If you can't access the full article, simply open it in a private tab.

Abhinav Mishra did an insightful comparison of JavaScript test tools: Jasmine, Mocha and Jest. They might be used in higher-level testing, too.

Filip Hric describes how to use Cypress to easily measure the performance of your website without using external libraries.

In this 9-minute video, Pramod Dutta shares practical advice on good practices that may help you catch bugs before they reach production.

There are various paths to grow your career in software testing. In this one-hour talk, Vernon Richards explains the difference between being a software tester and a quality coach.

The most important skill in tech... 🤣

Thanks for reading!

If you like this newsletter and it helps you become a better tester, you can say thanks and buy me a coffee.

PS. I'll be transferring every donation to Nasz Wybór Foundation which supports Ukrainian refugees in Poland. 🇺🇦 🙏

Dawid Dylowicz