Friday is time for good reads!🤪

In case you haven't seen it, here's a good "overview" article about QA in the industry.
Unfortunately, it is a paid one, so you won't be able to see it in full, but even a free part worth a read:
https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/qa-across-tech

Very relatable video... Scrum is often sucking your soul out and more people need to talk about it!

Unfortunately, there is no solution on the horizon (yet)😅
https://youtu.be/gSVBWvoNJ-s?si=Tce_VYytxCV6Th98

A small update!
Last week I've been a panellist on the NZ Testing Conference in Wellington. https://nztestingconf.nz/
The topic was: "Career planning and progression for QAs in the NZ".

I Had a great time answering the questions! So great in fact, that the event photographer made A LOT of photos of me.
Seemed meme enough so I made a telegram stickerpack! (pictures in comments)

Not 100% sure if this is useful, but it looks like an "interesting enough" find, so...
Some of the interview questions asked for "QA" in Amazon/Google/IBM/Oracle
https://prepare.sh/engineering/quality-assurance/company/all

I can see that a lot of them are either about engineering (likely for SDET/automator kind of roles) or generic (for manual/explorers).
Keep in mind that:
- age of the questions is unknown (might be way obsolete)
- there is no verification that they are actually legit (scraped over the internet)
So take it with a grain of salt... however, it might be helpful if you are preparing for a round of interviews!😎

If you are learning JavaScript, this thread might be helpful: https://x.com/thewizardlucas/status/1575147326468915200

Simple explanation of what is the purpose of the package-lock.json👏

Can you measure the quality?
Really? This is a great article about "measuring quality" by Vitaly Sharovatov and Rease Rios.
https://qase.io/blog/qa-myth-busting-quality-can-be-measured/

TLDR: use metrics, but only as an indicator, as a signal that something is "great or not quite right" with quality.

A great analogy used by the article authors (and they repeat this analogy several times as the reasoning progresses)

Let’s go back to the family road trip. You, the driver, have a destination (project completion) and planned stops (project milestones). Let’s say you made all the planned stops and made it to your destination. That would add up to a high quality road trip, right? No, because quality is not measured by getting to the destination, but rather the experience along the way. Let’s say one passenger got food poisoning, you spent several hours stranded with a flat tire, and a hotel at one of the planned stops lost your reservation so you had to sleep in the car one night. Would you still perceive that as a quality road trip?

Give it a read, it is worth it! 😍👍

This is an amazing collection of the "testing playground" resources!
Bookmark it!

A curated list of sites to practice testing on

https://github.com/BMayhew/awesome-sites-to-test-on

Lately, I have been thinking about "THE WAY" of adding testers/QAs to the company.

Is there a best team composition? Embedded or separate? Specialists or generalists?

This article looks into this question from the "Small product tech company" perspective and outlines 6 possible options to choose from.
Of course, everything is complex and "IT DEPENDS"!
But do you agree with my choice? 😋

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/where-does-tester-belong-team-topologies-ivan-karaman-nozvc

Great video by Dorothy Graham about "Blunders" in test automation ♟
I'm only 10 minutes in and it already seems valuable enough to share with you!

Screenshot to attract attention:)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXUfo9E_urE

In one article I prove that "local functions", "global/exported functions", "custom commands", "page/feature objects", and "BDD features/scenarios" are the SAME THING! 😅

ABSTRACTIONS!

If you are unsure about what "abstractions" are, read it!
There are many simple examples in the article.
Don't forget to interact with the article if you find some value in it 😋

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/make-your-test-automation-better-abstractions-ivan-karaman-yrvcc/

One more thing for today 😳
I've recently learned about the book called "The Culture Map" by Erin Meyer.
TLDR:

it is about CULTURAL DIFFERENCES between the countries on 8 different dimensions

Each of those dimensions is a spectrum and based on individual's upbringing and life experiences.


Why I tell you this? This could be helpful when leading people! Or, if you are not, you could show it to your managers/leaders.
By identifying the culture you're in, you are from, and the cultural dynamics of your team, one could become a better leader and communicator! 🤓

Here is a short article summarising the notes from the book: https://notes.nicolevanderhoeven.com/sources/Book/The+Culture+Map

Fridays are for the good stuff! ❤️
Are you ever feel frustrated that some ideas/suggestions are not done in the org, even though they seem like an obvious win?

Status quo is always easier, so you will encounter friction

Do you want to know why that happens and what to do about it?
Watch this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bxZuzDKoI0

Every time I read an article from Vitaly Sharovatov I think "Damn, he is good!" (slightly jealous😁).
He always finds a great real-world analogy.
For example:

How "leatherwork" explains that "testing" is an integral and continuous part of development (thus cannot really slow it down)

In another article (about measuring quality, I shared it above ⬆️) had a great "measure quality of a road trip" example.
If you, for some reason, are not following/connected to Vitaly on LinkedIn, you need to fix it RIGHT NOW! 😅

The article:
https://qase.io/blog/qa-myth-busting-qa-slows-work-down/

If you are using playwright, make sure to read about the

--only-changed

cli option!
It is very useful for the speed of local feedback loop:

only run test files that have been changed since the last git commit

https://playwright.dev/docs/release-notes#--only-changed-cli-option

I'm facing a little bit of an "existential crisis" and would appreciate you answering the survey!
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7228522044865359872/

Link in the comments of the post!

Someone I follow on Twitter shared some struggles in their journey of becoming a dev (after being in testing for a long time).
This reminded me about existence of this article.
I've read it long time ago and at the time was mildly shocked.

NO, I DO NOT WANT TO!

But over the years I started to better understand what "Testing" is and "Quality Assurance" is, and what their impact on "Quality".
Puzzle clicked! The differences between them were the key.
Now I am more content with the idea (still like testing more, haha) :)

Read it, it is short and thought-provoking! 😜

https://medium.com/@juraci.vieira/love-quality-become-a-developer-9339d60dbcd6

More good reads for you, my friends ❤️

This time a great article by Charity Majors.
Especially for those who are thinking about their career "long term" and dreads of the "what comes next after being a senior?" question....
For a lot of people the answer is obvious - MANAGEMENT! But this path is more nuanced that it seems at the first glance.

...management is a career change, not a promotion...

Read it if you ever thought of "should I try it?"
And keep in mind that this is not a "one way ticket"! 🥸

With a couple of years under your belt as a line manager, you now have TWO powerful skill sets. You can build things, AND you can organize people into teams to build even bigger things. Right now, both sets are sharp. You could return to engineering pretty easily, or keep on as a manager — your choice.

https://charity.wtf/2019/01/04/engineering-management-the-pendulum-or-the-ladder/

Good morning, pineapples! 🍍Happy Friday!
What can be better on Friday than reading about some "test automation" stuff!
Today's topic is: Page Object Model (aka POM) and assertions

Should you have assertions in the Page Object Class, or is it something that belongs to the Test code?

Selenium docs say "never"! Are they right? Read in my new article!

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/assertions-page-object-ivan-karaman-fcnvc/

Do you test in production?
https://youtube.com/shorts/lBA1gJqjf_g?feature=share

Woah, this is cool! 🔥
In a study of "production failures" conducted 10 years ago, the researchers found that:

A majority of the production failures (77%) can be reproduced by a unit test.

77%!
That is a lot! Traditional sentiment in many companies (I think) is that the majority of the failures come from the "integration" of blocks, not from the "internal logic" of blocks.

Give it a read, this is a very insightful article (link to a video in comments):
https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/osdi14/osdi14-paper-yuan.pdf

My article got the "most popular" title in the "Software Testing Weekly" newsletter. 🥇
Awesome? Awesome!

I genuinely never thought this will ever going to happen...
If you missed it, give it a read, it is a gold-winning article after all (or the most clickbaity one??)! 🤣

https://twitter.com/QANewsletter/status/1833289939204685905