Issue 242

COMMENT

Welcome to the 242nd issue!

I found this discussion interesting:

Is QA really all about finding bugs and breaking things?

People brought up a lot of constructive points on what the QA role should be.

As you may guess, it's much more than just finding bugs. But the responsibilities may depend on the environment you're in.

Overall, it's well worth reading to learn about different perspectives from testers.

Happy testing! 🙂

NEWS

Building (and Losing) Credibility as a Quality Coach

I liked Callum Akehurst-Ryan's advice on how to become an effective quality coach, which is especially important in more senior roles.

Furthermore, Maaike Brinkhof concisely points out why A good tester is a good communicator.

How to Make the Transition to a Team Without Dedicated Testers

"If companies are looking to improve velocity and feedback loops by removing dedicated testing specialists, they have a pretty good chance of pulling that off. Companies that see eliminating roles first will most likely fail." — Alan Page

In relation to that, Adheesha Chamod shares honest thoughts on How Weeks of Bug Fixing Transformed My Skills from the software engineer's perspective.

Testing is Contextual — No Best Practices, Please

This is a good reminder from Jayateerth Katti on why we should always approach testing with a new perspective, including practical tips on how to do that.

The Agile Testing Quadrants

Have you heard of the Agile Testing Quadrants? It's a simple but powerful thinking tool and Lisa Crispin has just shared the updated version of this approach.

Moreover, Stuart Thomas extends that thought by advising on Risk vs Effort: How to prioritise based on Risk.

AUTOMATION

Best Practices for Designing a Test Automation Framework

Govinda Solanki put together 17 valuable tips on what to consider when building a test automation framework.

From Data to Decisions: My AI-Driven QA Metrics Framework Journey (Part 02)

Following the first part, Amr Salem shows how to implement the innovative process for collecting QA metrics with AI.

Security testing your APIs — Unrestricted Resource Consumption

Continuing the helpful review of OWASP API Security Top 10, this time Bas Dijkstra describes how to test for exploiting an API endpoint.

SMURF: Beyond the Test Pyramid

You've probably heard of the test pyramid. In this post, Adam Bender advises to go beyond it and adopt a model that's based on speed, maintainability, utilization, reliability and fidelity attributes.

What Are We Really Testing?

That's a valid question we should ask when implementing a new test. Gil Zilberfeld demonstrates this mindset with an example of redundant unit tests.

Also, Ville Rytinki wrote a great article explaining that Your problem isn't test scripts.

TOOLS

Complexity draws us to low-code solutions

I like the way Maaret Pyhäjärvi points out the differences in how the popular test tools interact with the browser (e.g. Selenium, Playwright, and Cypress) and why it may influence our choice for choosing the right one for a project.

Custom Soft Assertions using AssertJ for Cleaner Code

Elias Nogueira wrote a helpful guide on building custom assertions with AssertJ that you can use with many Java-based test frameworks.

How APPIUM actually works? Internal Architecture

Appium is one of the most popular open-source test tools for mobile (and not only). Partik Chandra briefly explains how it works in practice.

How Much Abstraction is Still Okay in Cypress? To POM or Not To POM!

This is a great one by Sebastian Clavijo Suero, thoroughly analysing using the Page Object Model in Cypress tests.

Furthermore, Matthew Thomas describes Ten Ways To Find And Handle Flaky Cypress Tests with handy test reporters.

Make your Playwright tests run faster by using the Playwright API to wait

Wait, what? Can waiting make your Playwright tests faster? Mike Harris explains the idea with examples.

What's more, Irfan Mujagić demonstrates Boosting API Test Efficiency with Playwright's Request Interception.

BOOKS

What books on the Quality Assurance topic have you read?

If you're looking for book recommendations for testers, people in this Reddit thread shared several interesting ones.

Also, Bhavin Thumar describes 10 Books Every Software Tester Should Read to Sharpen Their Skills.

VIDEOS

Several talks about testing from the last Devoxx and VoxxedDays events in Belgium

It's interesting to see what people present about testing during the developer's conferences. Here are recent talks, including test automation with Selenium 5, TDD, Spring boot testing and more.

The Decline of Quality Assurance. The Role of Agile and Testing Cuts

Alex Khvastovich points out recent examples of major software outages and contemplates how prioritising delivery speed and reliance on AI might have compromised quality.

AND...

"Bug-free implementation"... 😂

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 242 October 21st 2024