Welcome to the 134th issue! 👋

I have two things to share with you this week.

The first one is The European Software Testing Benchmark Report 2022 by Software Testing News.

The most surprising thing I found there is that culture and budget are the least constraining factors to implementing QA and testing practices, while processes and team capacity are the most.

Secondly, it's my 30th birthday at the end of August, so I decided to take a month off work. For the next four weeks, I'll be travelling and taking time to relax and reflect.

That means the next newsletter issue will be out on September 2nd. Stay tuned!

And in the meantime... happy testing! 🙂

Dawid Dylowicz

To build quality products, teams need to have good quality culture. Vernon Richards tells us about the things that they should not be doing.

In relation to that, Ben Dowen shares his thoughts on The 7th Principle of Modern Testing which encourages sharing testing responsibilities with other team members.

And finally, Areti Panou shared some advice on Prerequisites For Teams Without Testers.

Well, I wish there was... or maybe not! Because what would have happened to our jobs then? People shared some interesting thoughts in the comments.

Speaking of QA processes, Venkat Ramakrishnan wrote a good article about The Testing Ecosystem Of Startups.

Wondering how to approach exploratory testing? Maaret Pyhäjärvi suggests six useful steps that will help you get started.

Moreover, Tejas Patel shares a lot of ideas for Easy & Step-By-Step Ways of Finding Bugs in Software.

Teams that don't put enough effort into defining requirements often pay a big price in the latter stages of the software development lifecycle. Lina Zubyte explains the right process of defining them by asking questions and writing down user stories.

Lidiya Egorova brings up an important, rarely discussed topic about software testing — the stress related to that role. She shares a lot of insightful findings from her observations.

Quality is a subjective thing. Dan Ashby uses real-life examples to describe different perspectives of perceiving it.

Dan also wrote a follow-up article explaining 8 Perspectives of Quality: A Model.

In this insightful article, Daniel Kheyfets shares their journey of automating the release process of mobile applications, including the planning, implementation, visualisation and consequences.

Semyon Kirekov explains when contract testing can be useful and shows a few practical examples of using it.

Ever wondered how you can utilise software design patterns in test automation? Kostiantyn Teltov demonstrates a lot of good examples.

Similarly, Elias Nogueira shows The best way to create browser instances using the Factory Pattern, Java, and Selenium WebDriver.

Working with microservice architecture? Tomas Fernandez wrote a detailed guide explaining the possible ways of testing it.

Additionally, Christian Witt wrote about the Testing levels: From Unit test to System test.

You may see people moving from software testing to software development. But there are people going the other way around, too. Zhimin Zhan shares what convinced him to do it.

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

What would you use to test desktop apps for Windows? Gļebs Veprevs did a great job describing and comparing several free tools.

Babu Manickam shares a short overview of Selenium and gives several reasons that may convince you to switch to Playwright.

Someone ran a survey asking software testers what test automation tools they use. Surprised by the results? Because I am!

If you're looking for a book to learn about software testing from scratch, you're not the only one. Luckily, there are quite a few good suggestions in this Reddit thread.

Inspired by an excerpt about Facebook's practices in software development and testing mentioned in the Exponential Organizations book, Lee Hawkins shares his thoughts on why it may not be so ideal.

There's no denying that test automation often requires a significant investment of time and effort. But how can you justify if it's worth it? Pramod Dutta gives some clues.

If you wonder where bugs come from and what you can do to increase the chances of preventing them, you'll enjoy this 43-minute webinar recording by Gil Zilberfeld.

Everyone will remember... 😂

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 transfer every donation to Nasz Wybór Foundation which supports Ukrainian refugees in Poland. 🇺🇦 🙏

Dawid Dylowicz