Issue 257

COMMENT

Welcome to the 257th issue!

Is your goal to work in Big Tech?

Now it might be easier to find such opportunities in testing, thanks to this handy job board:

Good luck and happy testing! 🙂

NEWS

Confessions of a First-Time Engineering Manager — Part 2

Following a very insightful story of becoming an engineering manager covered in the first part, this time Arighna Maity zooms into how they've been improving the testing process.

Also, Rahul Kurup wrote about the importance of The QA Meta.

Dear software testers, is your critical thinking ability even alive?!

This is a sobering reminder from Maaike Brinkhof that we shouldn't completely trust tools and AI to do the thinking part of testing for us.

On the other side, Daria Kotelenets wrote a good article about When Overthinking Becomes a QA's Superpower (and How to Keep It in Check).

Measuring What Matters: Key Metrics for Mobile Apps

I liked the way Aya Akl outlined several mobile app quality metrics and hinted at how to measure them with certain tools.

Twelve Months with Generative Reasoning: Hard Lessons Learned

Are you using your prompts well? Antoine Aymer points out several mistakes that testers can make when using AI and advises how to fix them.

Will AI Take Software Engineers' Jobs? Only Low-Level Ones. Advice: Learn E2E Test Automation

There are a lot of different opinions on how AI is going to impact the software engineering market, from engineers to CEOs. Here are Zhimin Zhan's thoughts on that, followed by a similar article: Will AI Replace Mid-Level Software Engineers?.

AUTOMATION

Introducing the Full-Stack Testing strategy

Having faced a challenge with the testing process while the product scaled, Priscilla Stephan had to develop with a new approach.

Furthermore, Nishi Grover Garg gives a theoretical overview of Crafting the Perfect Test Automation Strategy.

From frustration to framework: Revamping UI testing at Qonto (Part 1 — Paradigm shift)

Wondering how other companies approach UI testing? Yoann Goular shares lots of insights into their process at Qonto. And there's more about it in Part 2 — API overhaul and impact.

Mastering Testing Patterns: AAA, GWT, and Beyond

Stefano Alvares shows a few examples of good test design practices that can be applied to unit and other types of tests.

Moreover, Nayani Shashikala Perera wrote about Simplifying Test Automation with Design Patterns — Part 1: Facade Pattern.

Page Transactions as a new way to organize your testing automation

Douglas Cardoso came up with Guará — an interesting implementation of the Page Transactions pattern for UI tests. You can also learn about the comparison between Page Transactions and Page Object Model.

Techniques for Effective Test Data Cleanup in CI/CD

Maintaining and organising your test data before and after tests is crucial to the stability and maintainability of your test suite. Irfan Mujagić lists a few examples of handling this in CI.

Also, Peter Houghton points out: Don't be a Vogon, make it easy to access your test data!.

TOOLS

10 powerful tests with Chrome DevTools

As already mentioned several times before, Chrome DevTools has some great solutions for testing and debugging web apps. Here's a good overview by Kasturi Rajamanikkam.

Cypress Journey To Page Objects And Back

While Cypress officially suggests using App Actions over Page Objects, sometimes you may need to use the latter. Gleb Bahmutov shows the right way.

Dynamic Class Loading for Page Objects in Playwright Automation

Thananjayan Rajasekaran demonstrates using the Page Object Model in Playwright for flexible scenarios, such as localisation testing.

Also, Marcin Michalak provides some good examples of Automated accessibility test scripts in Playwright.

The Joy of BDD Testing: A QA's Journey with Cucumber

Jai Shrivastav illustrates the benefits of BDD with Cucumber to create and maintain requirements and tests.

Speaking of BDD, Mateus Lazarus put together a guide about Specflow to Reqnroll: Migrate From BDDs Libraries.

What's new in Playwright v1.50.0?

There are quite a few new features in the latest release of Playwright 1.50.0. Shivam Bharadwaj explains them in more detail.

Which automation framework are you using at work? (2025)

Someone ran a survey among the testing community trying to find out what the most used test automation tool is right now. Surprised by the results?

Also, I found another discussion with a great explanation of Why is an automation project called a framework?.

BOOKS

Book Review: "How To Test a Time Machine" by Noemí Ferrera

If you're looking to learn more about test architecture and automation, Lisa Crispin reviewed a book on that — How to Test a Time Machine by Noemi Ferrera.

VIDEOS

AI-Powered AgentQL: Why XPath & CSS Selectors Are Now Obsolete!

Karthik K.K has recently been sharing some great insights into the latest AI-related solutions for testing. Here's yet another one about AgentQL.

And another one — Local Deepseek R1 for Browser Use: Does It Really Work for Browser Automation?

What is Agentic AI? Can it impact Software Testing?

There's lots of buzz around AI agents now. But what are they? You can learn more from this 20-minute overview by Daniel Knott.

AND...

The-bugging... 😂

Thanks for reading!

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