Issue 241

COMMENT

Welcome to the 241st issue!

While sourcing the news for this issue, this discussion got my attention:

It's a sobering question and it doesn't seem there's a common theme.

In fact, testers provided all sorts of answers, such as test flakiness, unstable test environments, ineffective outsourcing and over-reliance on E2E tests, to name a few.

What else would you add?

NEWS

10 Proven Strategies to Improve Quality in Software Development

Chamila Ambahera describes several foundational approaches and activities that teams should adopt to achieve quality outcomes.

And one more that can also help is organising a Testathon, as Kristin Jackvony suggests.

Bug reporting: where is the devil? (in the details)

If you want to improve your bug reports, have a look at Ivan Karaman's good, practical tips.

However, someone's rightly wondering: What is the point of finding bugs, if they aren't going to get fixed anyway?

Feeling Like a Fraud After 5 Years as a Solo QA – Seeking Advice

This Reddit post got some attention. It seems that many people can relate to the author's story and they provide valuable advice on how to overcome that feeling.

It may also help to understand the Quality Engineer Role FAQs, well outlined by Cassandra H. Leung.

Taking your first steps in software testing

If you're at the beginning of your journey in software testing, you can find some valuable pieces of advice from Rahul Parwal in this article.

Why QA Automation Engineers Should Embrace Manual Testing

This is a great reminder by Rodrigo Quinta on how exploratory testing and other practices can help test automation engineers become better testers.

Also, Mark Winteringham neatly explains: How can manual testers take advantage of LLM adoption in testing?

AUTOMATION

Embracing DRY Principle to Streamline Test Automation

Curious how to apply the Don't Repeat Yourself principle in test automation? Raj Uppadhyay demonstrates that with a step-by-step example in Playwright.

Furthermore, Shubham Sharma gives a high-level explanation of How to Leverage Both FP and OOP in Test Automation.

Enhancing Cucumber Tests with the Screenplay Pattern

The Screenplay Pattern can make your test automation more effective. Shubham Sharma describes it and shows its implementation for Cucumber tests in JavaScript.

Moreover, Antonello Zanini wrote a decent overview of The Arrange, Act, and Assert (AAA) Pattern in Test Automation.

How Building a Simple Website Can Transform You into a Better Software Tester and QA Analyst in 2024

Having studied software engineering and built several apps myself, I can relate to Jaime Mantilla's point on how that knowledge and experience can improve testers' capabilities.

Outside-in: Using Your Acceptance Criteria to Drive Unit Tests

Callum Akehurst-Ryan has a few good points on how to make unit tests focused on behaviour rather than implementation.

On top of that, Kimball Robinson shares Practical Definitions of Unit and Integration Tests, which might not always be so obvious.

Scaling automation tests

How would you scale a test automation solution with over 2,000 Playwright tests? The testing community provides a few good ideas.

TOOLS

Bringing the Page Object Model to API Testing with Cypress: The API Objects Model

What happens when you use the Page Object Model for API testing? Lasitha Wijenayake explains that with an example in Cypress.

Additionally, you may also benefit from cypress-ajv-schema-validator v1.2.0, as described by Sebastian Clavijo Suero.

Five Playwright CLI features you should know

Playwright has recently extended the options for its CLI runner and here's a solid overview of them by Stefan Judis.

Supercharge Your E2E Tests with Playwright-Network-Cache

And if you're looking to improve handling network requests in Playwright tests, check out this guide by Vitaliy Potapov.

Moreover, Mustafa Yıldız demonstrates helpful examples of Using JavaScript Ternary Operator in Playwright Automation Tests.

WebdriverIO Configuration Guide: Setting Up Your Test Automation Framework

Wand to check out WebdriverIO? Hardik Chotaliya put together a step-by-step guide on how to automate tests with it.

Furthermore, Irfan Mujagić explains how to use WebdriverIO v9 with WebDriver BiDi.

VIDEOS

Debunking 7 Biggest Automated Testing Myths

In this 23-minute video, Nikolay Advolodkin goes through common misconceptions in test automation, such as high cost, achieving full automation and more.

Top Techniques for UI Testing of Jetpack Compose Apps

Testing Android apps? Alex Zhukovich shares some great tips on automating UI tests for that platform in this 38-minute talk.

AND...

The REAL root cause... 😂

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 241 October 14th 2024