Issue 142

COMMENT

Welcome to the 142nd issue!

Sometimes people may look at the number of bugs and frown upon them.

But what does the number by itself really mean?

This week, I found Damian Synadinos's reply to "Is 237 bugs good?" and I liked the way he put it.

Happy testing! 🙂

NEWS

A Guide to the top 20 QA metrics that matter

Not all metrics are equal, nor are all of them applicable to every situation. But if you're looking for inspiration, Shreya Bose shares a lot of great examples.

Following up on that, Amy Reichert wrote about The top 5 agile QA metrics to improve your testing.

Behaviour-Driven Development starts with collaboration, not automation

Danielle Dias provides great points on what BDD really is about and how to do it well.

Furthermore, Venkat Ramakrishnan wrote a good overview of Behavior Driven & Acceptance Tests Driven: A Testing Perspective.

Difference between Quality Assurance and Software Testing

These two terms are often used interchangeably. But do you know their true meaning? Benjamin Odunjo gives a brief explanation.

On that note, you may also want to know about the BA and QA collaboration approaches by Anastasiia Strielkina.

Does anyone else ever feel powerless as a QA?

I really liked how the community responded to this question. There are tons of reassuring words and pieces of advice. If you're in doubt as well — have a read.

Also, Should dev teams test their products/features?

Testing Horror Stories

Curious to learn about the anti-patterns in software testing? Here's a fair warning from Callum Akehurst-Ryan.

You might also want to know How to deal with a complaint about quality as Mike Harris greatly explains.

AUTOMATION

Shift-Left iOS Testing with Focus Flows

When you want to test features in isolation, you don't want to go through the additional steps that get you there. Suryakanta Mohapatra describes how they solved this problem at Lyft using Focus Flows.

Speaking of iOS testing, Soheil Novinfard wrote about Snapshot Testing in Action: Helpful or Trouble?.

Should we really follow the golden Testing Pyramid?

This is a great article by Chengchen Ji that challenges the main assumptions of the Test Pyramid.

Moreover, Ryan Craven created a handy Test Automation Strategy — Infographic.

Test Automation Framework — Reporting & Observability

Test automation is not only about writing code. It's also about meaningful monitoring and reports. In a series of five detailed articles, Damián Moga explains how to do it well.

You can read the part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5.

Test Automation with Python, an Ecosystem Perspective

Python is a versatile language with a lot of libraries which makes it a good choice for test automation. Maaret Pyhäjärvi gives a short overview of its ecosystem.

What test cases should be automated (and which shouldn't)

Kassidy Kelley gives a few valuable pieces of advice on how to decide which scenarios you should consider automating.

Related to that, Venkat Ramakrishnan wrote a short article on To Testcase Or Not To Testcase.

Where to start learning for automation testing?

If you're asking yourself this question, you're not the only one. Luckily, there are a lot of resources that people mention in this thread.

You might also be wondering the same thing as Gil Zilberfeld: Is Test Automation Worth It?.

TOOLS

Cypress Best Practices for Test Automation

Sanjeev Kumar shares a set of good tips and best practices for writing tests with Cypress.

Lean contract testing with Chakram

Diogo Nunes explains why they chose Chakram over Pact and Postman to implement their contract tests.

PowerMock CheatSheet: Tldr and Tips

If you code in Java, there are a few tools that can help you with mocking. PowerMock is one of them, and here's Tej Pratap Singh telling us more about it.

And if you want to learn more, you might want to read about Understanding @PrepareForTest in PowerMock.

Unleash the Full Power of Playwright With @playwright/test

Stefan Judis shares the features of @playwright/test — a dedicated test runner for Playwright.

Speaking of that, here are a few Playwright tips that will make your life easier — including how to select, act and combat flaky tests.

Writing API tests with PactumJS and Jest

Marie Cruz gives a nice overview of PactumJS — an open-source API testing tool.

In addition to that, Neethu Mohandas explains How to do API testing with PactumJS.

BOOKS

Remembering Jerry: Quality Software Management Volume 3 — Congruent Action

Continuing the great series of articles about Gerald M. Weinberg's books, Markus Gärtner recently wrote an overview of Quality Software Management: Volume 3 — Congruent Action.

VIDEOS

The Best Software Testing Videos on YouTube — Part 1 Conference

The weekend is here, so why not get inspired by some great talks on software testing from the biggest conferences? Here's a handy list of their YouTube channels.

AND...

Testing on multiple devices... 😂

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.

Issue 142 October 22nd 2022