NEWS
Breaking the Test Case Addiction (Part 10)
A great article by Michael Bolton on testing and reporting including A LOT of detailed test reports examples.
developsense.com
Testing skills I use in management
This is a cool one! Some time ago Lena Wiberg suggested a challenge to pair up with someone and write articles on the same topic and publish at the same time. James Thomas took up on that challenge and wrote his article titled Managing to Test. Both reads give really interesting insights about testing and management!
pejgan.se
Shifting my Quality Perspective: From a Quality to a Product Owner Role
As a tester I complained (a lot) about not well defined acceptance criteria. Now, as I am the one trying to identify them, I realise what a complicated task this is.
These are great insights from Areti Panou about her new Product Owner role that she moved to from a QA role.
unremarkabletester.com
What’s New In Selenium 4?
It's nice to see an official response to the long-awaited Selenium 4 release. Manoj Kumar — one of the creators — shares what new cool things are coming up!
applitools.com
AUTOMATION
Are unit tests a waste of your time?
Good food for thought about unit tests served by Valentin Radu. I also recommend reading the constructive discussion in comments as people share their opinions and experience on unit testing.
dev.to
Comparing Automated Tic Tac Toe Implementations
In this article, Alan Richardson compares his and Angie Jones' live-recorded independent solutions of automating a Tic-Tac-Toe game. Super insightful to see how the same thing can be achieved in by two different people using two different technologies!
eviltester.com
The Most Common Cypress Mistakes
Christian Lüdemann lists out the most common test automation mistakes made when using Cypress. What's great about it is that he not only shares best practices but also gives a great solution to each mistake.
christianlydemann.com
TOOLS
api-test — JSON API testing from the terminal
Subesh Bhandari created a handy CLI tool for simple testing API using JSON. He also posted a guide that can help you get started (note it's a premium article on Medium, so if you can't access it, simply the link in a private tab).
subeshbhandari.com
BOOKS
Best software testing books
Sławomir Radzymiński lists out seven of his favourite books on software testing, giving each of them a decent description. The last pick surprised me! 😉
awesome-testing.com
VIDEOS
Testing Within CI/CD
Tom McCawley gives a very insightful talk on how to setup CI/CD for testing based on his experience of doing it for one of his clients.
youtube.com
I think I'm done with QA — not my words, don't worry. It's a title of a recent Reddit thread that got a lot of attention (along with this one).
What happened there? Someone with 20 years of experience in the field has enough of "getting blamed for everything going wrong" and is thinking of moving to another role. There are a lot of comments with a similar vibe, too.
First of all, after 20 years you might have enough of any role — no doubt about it. It's natural to change jobs, roles, or even careers. The point is to make it your choice, not a forced one.
Secondly, let's break down the "getting blamed" part. This is a common problem with QA but it shouldn't be like that at all. I believe it's coming from the traditional waterfall approach that many big companies are still stuck in. When things take more time than estimated (they usually do), it puts pressure on the last phase — testing. No wonder we, testers, get stressed and have enough when blamed for mistakes we don't even own.
How to fix that? First of all, we need to be vocal about it. Talk to our peers and the management. Make the problem visible — chances are that they don't see it. Talk about how the process can be improved and the responsibilities redefined. If that doesn't bring any results, looking for another role, team or company might be the right choice.
Let me stress this out: The problem is not within a QA role. The problem is within an organisation that has bad practices and unclear QA responsibilities that, in result, put unnecessary pressure on testers.
Dawid Dylowicz