Issue 279

COMMENT

Welcome to the 279th issue!

Working in Big Tech is a dream of many. And it's possible!

This time, I want to share with you an inspiring story of How I got "that" job at Microsoft.

It's by Gaurav Singh — an SDET who worked in several top tech companies.

In preparation for that, Gaurav also shared some great advice on the interview process:

Good luck and happy testing! 🙂

NEWS

Managing the Consequences of the 'Ship Now, Fix Later' Approach

Daria Kotelenets shares an extensive guide on how managing known problems, technical debt, and defects can improve the overall system quality.

Moreover, Ahmed El-Deeb has some good points on why QA Doesn't Belong at the End — and What to Do About it.

Quality Coaching Scenario: This code won't take tests

How should you test untestable code? Callum Akehurst-Ryan explains how flipping the testing pyramid and focusing on exploratory and characterisation testing can help with it.

Also, Jitesh Gosai discusses: What if We Talked About Confidence in QA?.

What To Do When There's "Nothing to Test"

Vladimir Josifoski describes other activities outside of testing that you can do to deliver value to the team.

Similarly, Joep Schuurkes shares a reflection about Some of the things I did after being off for a few weeks.

Why I Like to Think Like the End-User When Testing a Feature

In this concise article, Higor Mesquita shares good tips on how to think like a user and highlights how it can help the overall product quality.

This is followed by Ravisuriya Eswara's article about Empathy — Missing in Engineers. Then, Why Think Like a User?.

Why is there no Chief Quality Officer?

An excellent question! Katja Obring shares interesting thoughts about it, while Rosie Sherry decided to expand this topic by sharing her views in an article about Quality Leadership Roles — what's the real story?.

Similarly, Simon Knight outlines The Smart Founder's Testing Strategy that's also related to this topic.

AUTOMATION

Code Coverage And Other Metrics

In another article of the series, Gil Zilberfeld explains why code coverage or any other metric alone should decide about the release readiness.

In relation to that, Sourojit Das shares a story of a project where The Code Was 100% Tested — And 100% Broken.

Does This Look Right To You, AI?

Can AI test a web app? Gleb Bahmutov decided to verify and see how good it is at interpreting and asserting according to feature requirements.

Also, Abdelkader Hassine shares the experience of Replacing Some Test Automation Assertions With GPT-4o API.

Page Object Model vs Page Factory in E2E Test Automation

If you wonder how these test automation design patterns compare, Courtney Zhan describes both of them and explains her preference.

In relation to that, Sergey Shukalovich wrote a short UI Testing Locators Guide: How to Write Stable and Maintainable Selectors.

Why You Should Test with Real Data (Sometimes)

Do you use mocks in test automation? Irfan Mujagić emphasises why you need to choose wisely when to rely on it, and when to use real data.

Similarly, James Thomas wrote about relying on Real vs Clear test data models.

Test code should rarely be resilient

Good advice from John Gluck on writing tests that fail fast and not using exceptions in them to reveal the real problems.

Moreover, Dennis Martinez thoroughly explains the benefits of practising Pull Request-Driven Development: More Clarity, Better Code.

TOOLS

AgentiTest — AI-Native Test Automation is Here

If you're looking for ways to do test automation with AI, you might be interested in a new open-source solution — AgentiTest — created by Google Cloud engineer, Karl Weinmeister.

Building a Robust Automation Framework with Playwright, TypeScript & Cucumber

Well, this is comprehensive! Rajesh Yemul put a lot of effort into documenting the journey of setting up a web test automation framework with Playwright and Cucumber. You can check out all the consecutive parts: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.

How does Playwright MCP work?

It's a wonderful, detailed explanation by Sławomir Radzymiński of how the Playwright MCP really works underneath. You can learn a lot from it.

Your Complete k6 Implementation Guide: From Reactive to Proactive

Once again, Hariprasath V S goes deep into exploring k6 capabilities for performance testing and shares the findings in this thorough overview.

The API Automation framework I wish I had known sooner

Millan Kaul demonstrates the key features of the API test automation framework built with TypeScript and leveraging some of the Playwright features.

VIDEOS

Quality Assurance Roadmap: Become a QA Engineer in 2025

Whether you're looking for guidance on how to become a tester or want to progress in your career, Alex Khvastovich gives a good overview of a QA roadmap in this 17-minute video.

Will AI Replace QA? Top 5 Questions Answered!

We often hear questions and opinions about AI replacing QA. Having worked with AI for testing and development, Karthik K.K. breaks it down and addresses the most common concerns.

Speaking of AI, Daniel Knott recorded a handy guide to AI prompts that boost your bug reporting.

AND...

Probably nothing... 😂

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 279 August 9th 2025