Welcome to the 170th issue!

This week, we reached 6,000 subscribers!

It's been an honour to curate and share this weekly compilation with you for over three years now.

And I'm proud it has become one of the world's largest and most-read newsletters on software testing.

Thanks for your continued trust and support. 🙏

Happy testing!

Dawid Dylowicz

Estel Tasso shares an intriguing story of taking on an informal leadership role as a test engineer and explains why it was beneficial for the team.

In relation to that, Igor Goldshmidt advises how to Optimize Software Test Planning with the 5W1H Method.

Have you seen tickets without acceptance criteria or even without a description? Not only you! Here's an insightful Reddit thread about it.

This seems to relate to Maaret Pyhäjärvi's experience with The Documentation Conundrum.

Vaibhav Kalekar gives some great advice on how to approach the hiring of testers based on quality goals.

Furthermore, Chris Kenst describes the testers' role as Effective Technical Investigators.

Based on multiple resources and his own experience, Mike Harris explains what testability means and how it can be influenced by teams and testers.

If you're wondering what it takes to shift testing left in practice, this Reddit thread is full of answers.

Additionally, you might want to explore Toni Ramchandani's vision of The Future of Testing: TestOps.

Why should developers bother about software testing at all? Henry J. Perez gives a few good reasons.

Similarly, André Guimarães Aragon wrote a solid guide on How to begin writing tests for legacy code.

Sometimes you learn by doing, sometimes you learn by watching. Someone's looking for examples of test automation in open-source projects for inspiration.

Also, What are some good recommendations for websites I can automate for my portfolio?

Tomasz Ostojski demonstrates a clever way of using a generic method for creating XPath selectors.

When it comes to automated testing of microservices, a good practice is to leverage several test levels. Denis Peganov explains which ones.

Similarly, Bhagya Susiripala also tells us How to test microservices using automation tools and techniques, and Bart Vanherck describes The Test Automation Pyramid in general.

Bob Salmon describes three interesting examples of situations when a failing test is actually a good thing that you can learn from.

Andres Sandoval gives an overview of a new gradle plugin for managing test devices on Android. Here's the second part about connecting it to Firebase TestLab.

Speaking of mobile testing, Lu wrote a good guide to Automated UI Testing on iOS using various tools.

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

Do you know the difference between different assertion types in Cypress? Ioan Solderea explains with examples.

Additionally, Ayhan Metin advises how you can Enhance Cypress Test Readability with cy.step().

Artillery is a helpful open-source tool for load testing. Amr Salem wrote a guide explaining how it works and how to get started with it.

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

There are a lot of software testing tools on the market. Zhimin Zhan revisits the ones that failed over time and predicts the next candidates.

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

In this thorough guide, Austėja Mituzaitė explains the basics of automating tests with Selenium in Python. You can also read the second part with a Page Object Model example.

There's a lot of misunderstanding about manual testing and its interpretation. Alan Richardson explains why and suggests the correct way of naming it.

In this 12-minute video, Daniel Knott gives a few valid reasons why testing is incorrectly perceived as an easy job.

The release day... 🤣

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.

Dawid Dylowicz