Issue 262

COMMENT

Welcome to the 262nd issue!

Behaviour-Driven Development hasn't had much good news over the past years.

First, Cucumber was silently deprioritised when SmartBear fired the original creators. And recently, Tricentis sunsetted Specflow.

So naturally, that raises a question — Is BDD Dying?

In this excellent article, Andrew Knight explains what led to this situation and what we should do to correct it, especially in the age of AI.

Happy testing! 🙂

NEWS

10 QA Mistakes That Hurt Software Quality — Are You Making Them?

I can relate to all of these great practical tips on what to do and not do in testing by Luis Osvaldo Serna Gomez.

And there's more good advice about Walking the QA Tightrope: Balancing Quality, Deadlines and Pressure from Matthew Whitaker.

AI: Where in the Loop Should Humans Go?

It's a very good question, and I enjoyed Fred Hebert's extensive take on the opportunities and limitations of AI and its impact on systems, users, and us.

On top of that, Daniel Draper gives a few examples of why AI doesn't belong in test runtime.

How an E2E Quality Lead Helps in Cross-Service Projects

Carmella Goll shares her experience as an End-to-End Quality Lead, responsible for bridging gaps in integration, testing, and communication to improve overall quality.

Moreover, Dennis Martinez gives valuable advice on how to Fix Your Bugs Before Doing Anything Else.

Rethinking Software Quality

Alessandra Moreira rightly points out how collaboration, communication, and best practices can help teams improve the quality of their products.

A great follow-up read to that is Jordan Edmunds Chetty's article — Feedback Loops are Software Quality.

AUTOMATION

A tale of two languages

Looking for an example of how to make tests clear to read? Gil Zilberfeld demonstrates that in a simple way.

Also, have you heard of Error-Driven Development? Shubham Sharma explains.

How API Can Break Front-end: Cases from Real Practice

Testing web apps? It's intuitive to focus on the UI, but you can't forget about the API as well. Alena Sultanova gives a few reasons why.

Also, Rajesh Sharma has a helpful tip on How to Stop Automated Tests from Skewing Your Website Analytics.

Request-Mocking-Protocol: A New Approach to Mocking Server-Side Requests in E2E Testing

In this detailed overview, Vitaliy Potapov proposes a scalable, proxy-free method for mocking server-side API requests in Playwright tests in order to improve their reliability.

The role of AI agents in test automation

Are you curious about how AI agents can impact testing? Tim Lolkema explains how they can complement more traditional test automation by helping with exploratory testing or generating automated scripts.

Why you shouldn't run tests sequentially

Writing tests that rely on execution order may lead to test flakiness. Nočnica Mellifera explores better alternatives like fixtures, hooks, and test steps.

Also, Lana Begunova advises to Stop Running High-Risk E2E Tests in Every Browser.

TOOLS

1000 timers in JMeter, which one should I use? Precise... Constant...

Using JMeter for performance testing? Alan Liew uses examples to explain the difference between the Precise and Concise throughput timers.

Moreover, Irfan Mujagić shows an example of Simple Load Testing for RESTful APIs with Locust.

How to Use JavaScriptExecutor in Selenium

In some web apps, Selenium's default commands may not work as expected. Mohammad Faisal Khatri describes a few use cases in which you may need to run custom JavaScript commands.

Playwright Release 1.51: Smarter Debugging, Enhanced Reports & More!

Playwright 1.51 is out and Debbie O'Brien tells us about the latest features that were introduced to make testing even more efficient.

Why you should never use page.waitForTimeout() in Playwright

We should always be careful when using waits in tests. Nočnica Mellifera explains why it's important in Playwright as well.

Moreover, Navanishan Reddy L. shows a helpful example of Intercepting Network Requests in Playwright.

VIDEOS

How to Progress in a Testing Career

In this 11-minute recording, Alex Khvastovich gives some good, general advice on how to grow and advance in software testing, especially if you're a beginner or mid-level.

Playwright MCP Server: Zero-Code Testing Magic with Cline & Cursor

Have you heard of Playwright MCP? Karthik K.K. demonstrates the abilities of this open-source implementation of MCP protocol for AI-powered browser automation using Playwright.

You can also watch examples of using it for No-Code API, UI & DB Testing and No-Code BDD Testing.

AND...

The story of testers... 🤣

Thanks for reading!

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