Issue 27

COMMENT

As I mentioned a few months ago, Starliner — a space ship from Boeing — had serious problems during its first unmanned Orbital Flight Test that nearly led to complete destruction of the capsule.

This week's investigation report from NASA shows that one of the main reasons leading to the mission's failure was insufficient testing. How insufficient? They performed a lot of small tests (unit and component) but they haven't done A SINGLE end-to-end test prior to the start! 🤯

I know this actually is rocket science and things going on there on both software and hardware levels are far from what most of us face every day, but neglecting an end-to-end test in such a critical project is beyond my understanding. And imagine they were supposed to put a crew into that space ship in one of the following missions...

PS. Want to test your software testing knowledge? Try solving this crossword puzzle! 😉

NEWS

How does a developer see testers

I really liked Mihaela Sfat's insightful interview with Sergiu Oltean — a software engineer — on how developers see testers.

Reasons for your unreliable mobile tests

A great mix of warnings and pieces of advice on mobile testing by Mathias Strziga. You can tell they come directly from his experience, as these are very relatable!

Research: Assessing Incremental Testing Practices and Their Impact on Project Outcomes

This is an interesting overview of the research by Ayaan Kazerouni assessing how the developer's approach to testing affects the project outcome.

Self-Testing by Developers. The Hot Potato To Cool Down

Should developers test their own code? If so, how to do it in a sane way? Flux Technologies shared some good advice and described how this approach worked for them.

The dangers of becoming a full-stack tester

Although a lot of roles in software engineering seem to be going towards full-stack nowadays, Michael Fritzius explains why this might not be so beneficial for software testers.

AUTOMATION

Arrange-Act-Assert: A Pattern For Writing Good Tests

A simple but very effective pattern for writing clear tests, presented with examples by Andrew Knight.

Determining The Priority for Test Automation

In this article, Mariia Hutsuk and Sivamoorthy Bose give plenty of solid pieces of advice on choosing the right test automation strategy.

A good continuation to that is Andrew Knight's set of 12 traits of highly effective tests from this week.

Is running automation testing scripts in production a good practice?

In short, yes, but it has to be done well. Mehul Kagathara explains why and how to test in production while taking into consideration the potential risks.

Unit Testing is Overrated

This is a MASSIVE article by Alexey Golub challenging the status quo of the best practices in unit testing. By using code examples, Alexey explains what works well and what could work in a better way. Also, it's worth checking the comments section because the discussion there is as meaty as the article itself!

TOOLS

Using Faker to generate data for your Cypress tests

A cool guide by Kevin Tuck on how to use FakerJS to auto-generate semantic test data. I've used this approach for years and it's really handy!

Driverless Automation With Selenium

Simon Berner demonstrates how Selenium-Jupiter can make various browser automation in Selenium much more generic. No more hassle with handling multiple drivers!

VIDEOS

Webinar: Ask Me Anything — Michael Bolton

When someone as experienced as Michael Bolton is doing an AMA session, you simply can't ignore it. Somehow it took me a month to discover this recording, but I don't think it became irrelevant by any means since then. Just play it and enjoy it!

AND...

Tester–Developer relationship in a nutshell... 😂

Issue 27 July 10th 2020