Happy Valentine's day! ❤️

Two things from me this week:

1/ In the 70s, Japan created great quality products. At the same time, the quality of US products declined. Japanese's success is credited to one man — Dr. W. Edwards Deming — the father of quality management. This week, I've stumbled upon this great documentary from 1980 titled If Japan can, why can't we?. While not directly related to software testing, it gives amazing insights into how management style, worker's satisfaction and statistical analysis can contribute to increased production and a higher quality of the product.

2/ Just a week ago we laughed at Iowa Democratic Caucus app debacle, but now it's about something more serious. Boeing is having a really bad time. Last year, the infamous 737 MAX airplanes crashes killed 346 people. Last week, their Starliner crew module was close to a disaster. Both are said to be due to software errors. As NASA says about the latter: "There were numerous instances where the Boeing software quality processes either should have or could have uncovered the defects.".

TL;DR: Testing is important, but building the quality in is crucial. 🙏

Dawid Dylowicz

Great article by Theresa Neate on why more testing does not equate to higher quality, including tons of pieces of practical advice. This is what inspired me the most this week.

I enjoyed this thought-provoking article by Jess Ingrassellino. First, she explains a few concepts around AI in a digestible way. Then, she asks lots of questions directed to help you understand how to approach AI-based systems as a tester.

A super insightful article about the browser and device fragmentation. If you're testing on multiple browsers or mobile devices, this is a must-read!

Testing mobile apps is not all about these new, shiny features. There are plenty of non-functional elements you need to consider, such as push notifications, device network issues, location services and app installation. In this post, Nicky West explains how to test these areas.

Do you know how Selenium really works? There's no better person to ask than David Burns, who takes the framework apart and explains the basics. In the first part — linked above — he talks about the transportation layer. And in the just-published second part, it's about navigation.

Looking for some practical advice on how to create a solid automated test pipeline? Dennis Martinez shares a comprehensive wrap-up of the best practices that he collected during his 15-year career, including examples of particular tools for the job. Quality stuff!

SOLID principles — you may have heard about them. But do you know how to use them in practice? First Anton Angelov explains each principle with a code example, then he comes up with five high-quality test attributes for writing good automated tests. I did learn a lot!

In this handy tutorial, Sławomir Radzymiński shows how to create isolated Cypress web UI tests that can be run offline thanks to the framework's built-in API stubbing feature. A sample React app example can be found here.

If you're planning on testing API in Python, Yuliya Bagriy shows how to do it using each of two popular libraries: requests and bravado.

Is Playwright — the new Microsoft's open-source JavaScript library for testing multiple web browsers — about to replace Puppeteer? Alister Scott first shows how to use the tool and then gives a fair review.

Tester vs Developer... 😂