Issue 265

COMMENT

Welcome to the 265th issue!

Once again, Steve Semelsberger shares with us some great insights from his work as the CEO of a testing services company:

Quality Engineering for CEOs: The Quest for Confidence (Post 4).

I believe that anyone in test leadership, and even individual contributors, can benefit from this knowledge.

You can also catch up on previously featured first, second and third parts.

Happy testing! 🙂

NEWS

AI usage for testers: Quadrants model

Great breakdown by Rahul Parwal highlighting how and where AI impacts testing productivity and why human expertise is still crucial in some areas.

And if you're on the lookout for practical tips, Weeraporn Paisingkhon gives a few ideas on how to Level up QA with generative AI Tools.

How to stand out as a QA: Building the personality and portfolio to outshine

The QA job market hasn't been at its best recently, so such advice from Swathika Visagn may help you grow your career.

Quality Attributes — those pesky "non-functional" requirements

Instead of dividing testing into functional and non-functional, Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory advise focusing on what quality attributes are the most important for a given project.

In addition to that, Alessandra Moreira suggests Embedding Real Shift-Left Practices.

You Call It 'QA', But Without These KPIs, It's Just Blind Luck

There are lots of possible quality metrics that we can measure. But which ones really matter? Brijendra Singh shares his thoughts.

AUTOMATION

Building and improving Page Objects, one step at a time

Bas Dijkstra shows a great example of gradually improving the implementation of a Page Object Model.

In addition to that, Gil Zilberfeld explains when it makes sense to start The War on Code Duplication in tests.

Cutting Through the Noise — The Case Against Gherkin in Automation

Elliott Hrynacz explains why Gherkin often adds unnecessary complexity to tests and why a code-first approach might be better to maintain in the long run.

Scaling Strategies for Parallel Test Execution

There's no doubt that parallelisation helps with faster test execution. But did you know there are different ways to achieve that? Yevhenii Otsevych gives a concise overview.

Also, here's a relevant discussion on Reddit — Why wouldn't you run your tests in order?

Test-Driven Development: Red, Green, Refactor!

Jamie Ingram gives a great overview of the core principles of TDD, pointing out that there's much more to it than just "writing tests before code".

Furthermore, Juan José Blasco Burguillos describes The Three Deadly Sins of TDD — And How We Escaped Them.

The Pesticide Paradox in Test Automation Maintenance

If you haven't heard of the pesticide paradox, one of the Seven Testing Principles, then this article by Irfan Mujagić explains it well.

In that context, Mirek Długosz shares a story of Interesting bugs: peculiar intermittent failure in testing pipeline.

TOOLS

Cypress Rest Easy

Gleb Bahmutov has recently released a new, handy plugin for Cypress — cypress-rest-easy — that allows you to easily mock server's API for your tests. You can check out the example.

Furthermore, Bart Vanherck shows how to do Cypress session validation.

Creating a Cypress project from scratch using TypeScript + Cucumber

If you wonder how to use Cypress with Cucumber, then this guide by Pablo Peña Marín can help you get started.

Additionally, if you want to run your tests in parallel, Aditya Putra Pratama explains how to Boost Test Execution with Cypress Split.

Testing cloud applications without breaking the bank: Testcontainers and LocalStack

This is a good overview of an approach to testing cloud-hosted applications by Fernando Teixeira using two powerful open-source tools — LocalStack and Testcontainers.

You may also want to learn from Dmytro Stekanov about Leveraging mocks for automated E2E testing.

Visual Regression Testing: Implementing Snapshot test on iOS

Javier Calatrava wrote a solid step-by-step guide on how to set up and run visual tests for iOS using the SnapshotTesting library.

BOOKS

Core Takeaway on Designing Automation Test Suites from "Software Engineering at Google"

Wondering how Google approaches test automation? Andrey Enin shares some insights into it based on the Software Engineering at Google book.

VIDEOS

AI-Driven Test Automation with Playwright + Cursor + MCP Server

Last week, I mentioned the official Playwright MCP server release by Microsoft. And now, Joan Esquivel Montero shows how to use it in this insightful 20-minute overview.

I also recommend watching Joan's previous tutorial on Integrating Playwright with Claude AI from Scratch.

AND...

Who needs UI tests...? 😂

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 265 April 9th 2025