Welcome to the 205th issue!

A discussion for today:

Does anybody else feel like the manual QA job market is done?

Yes, I know this question surfaces regularly in the community. But every time in a different context.

Almost a year ago, it was related to the rise of AI, fearing it would take over our jobs.

This time, it's in the context of the economic downturn and layoffs in tech.

Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of contrasting opinions.

You can also find out more on this topic In the Video section of this issue.

Happy testing!

Dawid Dylowicz  

TimeShiftX — Start Time Shifting Today

TimeShiftX lets you time travel your software to test date and time-sensitive functionality and code such as year-end, daylight savings, and billing. Employ instant time shifting inside Active Directory & Kerberos without code or system clock changes and removing all pain points. Try it out.

vornexinc.com  

Building a QA Team — Part 1

In the first part of the series, Graham Ellis shares his point of view on what qualities to look for in testers when expanding a QA team.

Also, Beth Clarke explains why The Future of Tech is Built on Generalists, not Specialists.

medium.com  

Deciding What to Test

This is a great, comprehensive guide by Lana Begunova on how to choose what should be tested, including several models that can help with the assessment.

Furthermore, Wayne Roseberry gives several useful tips on Generating Testing Ideas From Datastructures.

medium.com  

Harnessing Your Development Team for Quality Assurance: A Strategic Guide to Effective Inquiry

M M Kishore shares his experience on what types of questions you should ask before starting testing, and why.

medium.com  

Test Strategy Storming

Wondering why it's important to have a good test strategy? Kathrin Potzahr explains and shows how to do it with examples.

medium.com  

Device and OS Version Selection Strategies for Effective Mobile Automation Testing

Irfan Mujagić wrote a helpful guide to choosing the right approach for testing on mobile devices, including some insightful sites with metrics and stats.

thegreenreport.blog  

Integrating Software Testing in DevOps

If you're curious about how testing practices can fit into DevOps, Dennis Martinez wrote a decent overview.

dev-tester.com  

Security testing your APIs — Broken Function Level Authorization

Continuing the detailed series on security testing, Bas Dijkstra explores ways of finding another important vulnerability from OWASP API Security Top 10.

ontestautomation.com  

When the build is green, the product is of sufficient quality to release

Mirek Długosz warns about the risk of relying on a single metric to decide on release readiness and advises on how to improve this process.

Additionally, José Carréra wrote a great article about: Are You Seeing RED? Restoring Reliability To Test Results.

mirekdlugosz.com  

Elevate Your Testing Game with TestingPod Insights

Dive into the TestingPod blog to stay at the forefront of QA! Currently featuring articles on Black-box testing, cross-browser testing strategies, and mastering the art of using Selector Hub for XPath. Stay informed — read and subscribe here.

magicpod.com  

k6 — New Web Dashboards with an HTML report

k6 has recently announced a new open-source version 0.49.0 that includes an exciting feature — a web dashboard for tracking performance test results in real time. Here's a short overview of this feature by Millan Kaul.

github.io  

No more driver management in Selenium WebDriver

If you ever used Selenium for testing, you probably know that browser management has always been a challenge. Elias Nogueira describes how it evolved over time and what the current easy solution is.

eliasnogueira.com  

Page Object Model and Page Factory in Selenium

Rinaldo Badigar describes the popular Page Object and Page Factory design patterns in Java with Selenium.

Furthermore, Rinaldo also wrote about Parallel Testing using TestNG and Selenium.

hashnode.dev  

Playwright stories: Navigating Tricky UI Automation Scenarios for Beginners

There are some interesting, non-trivial test automation examples that Kostiantyn Teltov demonstrates with Playwright.

Additionally, Semih Kasımoğlu wrote an insightful article on Understanding Playwright's test.slow() and slowMo options.

medium.com  

Ultimate Guide to Playwright Selectors

If you're looking for a comprehensive overview of Playwright selectors with examples, Dominik Szahidewicz wrote just that.

bugbug.io  

An Update on the QA Job Market | Microsoft Laid Off 1900 Employees

You might have heard of the new rounds of layoffs that have been announced at Big Tech companies since the beginning of the year. Alex Khvastovich shares his opinion on how to interpret that in the context of the testing job market.

youtube.com  

Testers always find a way... 😂

Thanks for reading!

If you like this newsletter and it helps you become a better tester, you can say thanks and buy me a coffee.

Dawid Dylowicz