Welcome to the 293rd issue!

Someone shared quite a controversial point of view that stirred a discussion on Reddit:

Why we stopped doing technical interviews for QA Engineers.

The thing is, AI is making it harder for interviewers to judge candidates, leading to unconventional solutions.

While there might be madness to this method, I also recommend reading Bartosz Kustra's observations of The 3 Skills Gaps That Tank QA Automation Interviews.

Happy testing! 🙂

Dawid Dylowicz

There are more and more AI solutions that have the potential to help testers and developers. But do they work in practice? People in this thread share their experience.

Moreover, Has anyone actually gotten AI test automation to work or is it all hype?

A few weeks ago, I shared a collection of resources on Chaos Engineering. Today, I'd like to highlight a practical example of running such exercises by Sinan Oynak.

There's some insightful thinking by Taras Mankovski who explains with examples how pyramids, feedback loops, and system components influence testing decisions.

Additionally, Keith Klain shares a thought-provoking article about The Search for the Real In Software Quality and Testing.

Testing is more than just automation. Someone shared this important message on Reddit, and it resonated well with the testing community.

Similarly, Esther Okafor rightly points out the risk that We're Automating QA Into Irrelevance — And Missing the Point Entirely.

Your testing effectiveness may depend a lot on how well you know the product. Marina Jordão gives some helpful tips on how to get more prepared.

Moreover, Vidya Pamidi correctly outlines What Happens When QA Enters the Room Early.

This is yet another example of leveraging AI for testing. This time, Nikolai Gomanov shows how to set up an AI agent to interpret user stories in Jira, create test cases in TestRail, and even automate tests.

Test pyramid is the most popular test strategy, but it's not the only one. There are other "shapes" with different purposes for different projects. Here's a story of how Alexander Zich ended up with a Christmas Tree.

Also, Do you run E2E smoke tests before merging or after deployment?

In this thought-provoking article, Josh Grant reflects on the evolution of testing tools and their impact on making test automation easier and more accessible over the past years.

Automating tests for mobile apps? Josphine Job shares an interesting idea on properly setting up and structuring the Page Object Model.

Moreover, she explains Why Logout Belongs in Test Setup, Not Teardown.

The primary role of tests is to provide feedback. It may seem counterintuitive, but if your tests pass all the time, you may not get exactly what you need. Hence, Masoud Bahrami explains why broken, flaky and failing tests can give more valuable insights.

Similarly, Ran Algawi wrote about "It's Just A Flaky Test": The Most Expensive Lie in Engineering.

Bug Magnet is a popular and praised free browser extension for testers. Joe Colantonio shares an overview of new features, such as the BugMagnet AI Assistant.

Thananjayan Rajasekaran continues to share great tips on improving Playwright tests. This time, it's about creating a helpful, custom test report.

Furthermore, Pratik Patel put together A Simple Guide to Fixing Flaky Playwright Tests.

If you use Appium to implement mobile tests, Josphine Job has some great tips for you, including advice on How to Write Cross-Platform Native Locators for Appium and How to Control Appium Installation with noReset and fullReset.

Sometimes your tests are as effective as the test data you use in them. Viktoriia Ivanova describes two helpful Java libraries to help you with that: DataFaker and Instancio.

And for a deep dive, check out Lucas Fernandes's overview of DataFaker: Revolutionizing Test Data Generation in Java.

If you're looking for a new read on testing, Nicola Lindgren gives a review of a recently released book by Vernon Richards.

With Playwright becoming a de facto go-to test tool for web app test automation, many of you may wonder how to migrate from other tools in the most effective way. Karthik K.K. demonstrates how to use AI to achieve that.

Every quality practice these days... 😂

Thanks for reading!

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Dawid Dylowicz