Issue 294

COMMENT

Welcome to the 294th issue!

Now, that's impressive.

Spotify has built a solution based on AI agents to automatically create, test and merge code changes for migrations and dependency updates:

I must say, this level of confidence requires some solid quality gates.

Kudos to Max Charas and Marc Bruggmann for sharing the details.

Happy testing! 🙂

NEWS

AI and QE: Patterns and Anti-Patterns

We know that AI is here to help us, but we also need to use it wisely. Joel Wilson gives some advice on where to leverage and where to be careful with AI in testing.

Similarly, Maaret Pyhäjärvi shares a process of developing a Habit of AI in Quality Engineering, while Ioannis Psaronikolakis wonders — Does AI Mitigate QA Curiosity?.

How to Get Developers in Your Team to Contribute to Your Test Automation

Agile Testing is all about a whole-team approach to quality and testing. Nicola Lindgren explains how to get others involved.

Moreover, Keith Klain shares some thoughts on the (Testing) Mind over (Developer) Matter(s).

How should we test this?

This is a wonderful series of articles by Huib Schoots explaining the foundational concepts of how we could approach testing. You can already read the following parts: 2, 3, 4, 5.

Also, Callum Akehurst-Ryan advises that if you Want to be a better Quality Engineer: Lose the Ego.

Quality = Engineered + Experienced — explained with fountain pens

What is quality? It's a tricky question, and rather than seeking the ultimate answer, it should make us reflect. Just as Maaike Brinkhof did here.

Furthermore, Janine Nguyen issues A Public Apology To Engineers From Someone Who Has Watched Quality Fail.

Our Bug Reports Are Ignored… Until a Customer Says the Same Thing

This post drew some attention from software testers on Reddit, and rightly so. I mean, who hasn't faced such a problem at least once?

In a related thread, someone asked: How do you handle "won't fix" / known issues in your team?, while others are discussing Building a QA Dashboard in Jira to show the metrics.

AUTOMATION

Building Mac Farm: Running 2000+ iOS Pipelines Daily

Yusuf Özgül shares an insightful overview of how they approached an iOS testing pipeline at scale and the challenges associated with it.

Similarly, Osama Sayed proposes a CI/CD Pipeline For Android.

Declarative Action Architecture: A Scalable Pattern for E2E Automation Testing

Interested in trying something other than the Page Object Model? Nai-Yuan Chang describes an intriguing approach using a layered architecture.

Moreover, Mohammad Faisal Khatri shares an in-depth overview — What Is Page Object Model (POM) Design Pattern?

How to Evaluate LLMs Without Opening Your Wallet

Testing LLM models? While setting up the evaluation framework, you can start with a mocked solution first to avoid unnecessary costs, as Irfan Mujagić demonstrates.

Implementing Quality Gates in Your Software Project

Looking to shift testing left? Ned J. advises creating several layers of checks before pushing to the repository, such as automated tests, commit hooks and isolated environments.

In relation to that, Okan Yenigün describes using Contract Testing as a Formal Agreement Mechanism for Reliable API Interaction.

Test Automation Structure for Single Code Base Projects

Wondering how to structure your test framework? Aykut Denizci and his colleagues share insights into the approach they implemented for one of the projects.

What's more, Albert Ścibor tells us about the Layers of Verification: Why Full E2E Coverage Is the Wrong Dream.

BOOKS

Book Review: Contract Testing in Action

Want to learn more about contract testing? Nicola Lindgren gives an overview of a fairly recent Contract Testing in Action book by Marie Cruz and Lewis Prescott.

VIDEOS

Automate with AI — OpenCode, Chrome DevTools MCP, WebDriver and Java

In this 14-minute recording, Alan Richardson demonstrates how to use OpenCode and your browser to automate Selenium tests. And if you prefer reading, check out this article.

Migrate Cypress to Playwright with AI — 10x Faster!

Last week, Karthik K.K. showed us how to migrate from Selenium to Playwright using AI. This time, it's Cypress' turn.

AND...

Cooking vs coding... 😂

Thanks for reading!

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Issue 294 December 1st 2025