Remember the "anyone keen to join me" post?
I found a few people and arranged an event!
But... almost forgot to announce it here! This time the topic is:

Generating test data

Come to the stream, chat with me, stay for the learning and fun (haha!)
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➡️ Friday 11th, 4 PM, NZST New Zealand Standard Time—-
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAbIFJy-oPQ

Here's "yet another horror story" of how software can RUIN THE LIVES of the people. This one has a happy ending, but this ending was possible because the Twitter/X thread went viral.

For any detectives here, it is very likely that the answer to the question "Who is the murderer?" is "AI", but humans FAILED to control and stop it.
Periodic reminder that if you are working with SOPHISTICATED AND BIG software systems (like eBay) you need to TEST THEM BETTER.

(assumptions zone) The team that ships the "AI flagging feature" might not be aware of how exactly the customer support operates, and vice versa... So it is possible that AI flags the profile and there is no working mechanism to stop it from doing so or mark it as a "false positive". As a result, the "end-to-end" user journey ends up being a complete mess!

But hey, all tests were passing when you shipped it, right? 😅

Link to the original thread: https://x.com/CassieCeleste/status/1843702724090835178
For those without an account, PDF in comments ↘️

A reminder that the "test data generation" livestream is happening today!

...and 2 more streams are in the pipeline!
(link in comments)

New stream is scheduled to go live on Wednesday, 4 PM New Zealand Standard Time!
Come over and chat with me and James 😎
https://youtube.com/live/9_PfMYR-W98

Surely most of you reading this done some sort of "estimations" in some shape or form.
Then this is a good watch for you. It is not a testing/quality related per se, but useful.

TLDR:

Estimates are waste 🗑

What to use instead? Projections!
Turns out, if you just count "how many stories we have" and "how many we finished" the projection line for the future is pretty accurate (and more agile)!

There's a lot more good wisdom nuggets in it!
Watch the video and show it to your team (and especially your managers)! 😜

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVBlnCTu9Ms

Reminder that I'm live streaming with James Espie tonight!
4 PM NZST (in 7 hours)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_PfMYR-W98

VERY NICE mnemonic and visualisation (screenshot inside) for different types of test: UI/Integration/Unit!

The SMURF mnemonic is an easy way to remember the tradeoffs to consider when balancing your test suite:
- Speed
- Maintainability
- Utilization
- Reliability
- Fidelity

Different types (or layers) of tests will look differently on each of those 5 "dimensions"
See screenshot in comments and read full blogpost here: https://testing.googleblog.com/2024/10/smurf-beyond-test-pyramid.html

Periodic reminder that "automated tests/checks" should be only part of the bigger picture and testing strategy, not the WHOLE/ONLY THING.

"Automate everything" or "only automation" mentality leads to bad testing.
Bad testing leads to bad product...
Bad product leads to "we need more automated tests"...

...and the circle continues 😅

Sometimes it is worth to stop, look around, and reflect!
https://medium.com/@vrytinki/your-problem-isnt-test-scripts-741adf79bf84

Very good rant on AI and how it is used and abused by many professionals! 🤣
TLDR summary:
1. Faster != Better
2. AI! AI! AI! At the conferences (everyone is sick of it)
3. AI content has no soul

Give it a read!
https://www.ontestautomation.com/i-am-tired-of-ai/

One more link that seems to be great resource for accessibility testing. Now it is "WCAG requirement -> explanation + how to test".

Check it out and bookmark for future:
https://github.com/alphagov/wcag-primer/wiki

Really helpful article with a lot of examples on how "glob matching" works. For those who just done a "HUH??" face, this is what is used by many frameworks to search for a certain pattern.

Example use case: need to only run tests that are located in the "/API/" subdirectory

Another example: match that this network call went to the "/users/{id}" endpoint

So it is useful for general understanding + for the users of the test Frameworks like Cypress (author uses cy.intercept() as an example).

Give it a read, picture with a cheat sheet inside!
Kudos to the author - Sebastian Clavijo Suero 👋😎

https://dev.to/sebastianclavijo/unlocking-the-mystery-deciphering-the-enigmatic-code-of-urls-glob-patterns-in-cyintercept-3mgg

Insightful data slice for those who are trying to future-proof yourself and your career. What UI test automation framework to learn?

Spoiler: it is Playwright ;)

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/artem-bondar_last-week-i-talked-with-more-than-70-qa-leads-activity-7259342862956322816-sRHU

🚨GOOD STUFF WARNING!🚨
If you are into test automation & coding, you should definitely bookmark that repo!
This is pure gold! Lots of great testing advice in six categories.

Section 0: The Golden Rule
Section 1: The Test Anatomy
Section 2: Backend
Section 3: Frontend
Section 4: Measuring Tests Effectiveness
Section 5: Continuous Integration

It has JS/Node.js flavour, but lots of the advice will be applicable in other ecosystems as well!

Check it out: https://github.com/goldbergyoni/javascript-testing-best-practices

Interesting take on the world of software development and quality by Maaike Brinkhof. I'll quote one thing:

enshittification in the name of profit

Lesson for me: put your work in the "zoomed out" perspective (and be ready to be sad...)
https://www.maaikebrinkhof.nl/neutral-quality-is-too-much-to-ask-for/

This article is a nice reminder that the bugs are mere symptoms of the underlying issues.

One needs to look beyond the surface of the bug (the "what") to figure out the REAL ISSUE is (the "why")
...and fixing it after finding of course 😂

https://qase.io/blog/bugs-are-symptoms/

Cool (and really simple) automation idea: how to catch all browser errors?

They are often not visible or not caught by other assertions in the test! But catching them is important because they might be impacting user experience (aka being bugs).

Answer is here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/stefan-judis_this-is-by-far-one-of-my-favorite-playwright-ugcPost-7288591918169505793-J2WY

Did you know that Google Chrome Dev Tools now have an AI assistant built in?
https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/ai-assistance/quickstart

You could ask about:
- networks requests
- performance
- styles

Pretty cool, huh? 🔥😱
Of course, it is a generative AI in its' current state, so you need to take it with a grain of salt. But it will definitely help in some cases, especially if you spend a lot of time in devtools!

(screenshot inside)

I understand that Page Object Model (POM) pattern in test automation is still popular.
But have you ever asked why?
Back when the automation frameworks were doing its' baby steps, chaos emerged.

We needed a way to deal with it. So POM was born.

POM turned chaos into structure

But now... do we need to continue using it?
I tend to think we DO NOT...🥸

Here's a nice article written by Murat Ozcan (and one more link will be in the comments)
https://dev.to/muratkeremozcan/page-objects-vs-functional-helpers-2akj

Have you ever seen a job ad for a testing position that instead of an extensive list of everything asked for just... time?
Yes, time!

https://www.seek.co.nz/job/82740010
This is a job ad for a game tester position in Auckland, NZ that asks for just:

At least 1000 hours of experience collectively with our games, Path of Exile and Path of Exile 2

How cool is that?! I am impressed!
(screenshot inside in case it will expire)

Stumbled upon a potentially useful (to some) website with the:
- small test tools/utilities
- templates
- guidelines

Idea is not new, of course... I guess the main source of value here is that it all is centralized in one place. Kudos to author - Eugene Semenyuk.

https://www.onlytests.io

Not promoting ISTQB, but found a cool website where one could train and practice the actual exam!

So if you into certificates, check this out: https://prostqb.com/en/study