Welcome to the 45th issue!

During my career in software testing, I mostly learned from others.

The recipe was very simple:

1. I always tried to surround myself with people who knew more than me.
2. I kept asking them questions and asking for feedback.

So I liked how Adrian Rutkowski took the courage and openly asked for a review of his code from the first attempt to automate a UI test with Python and Selenium.

It's just a nice lesson learned not to be afraid to show your work and ask for feedback. It costs nothing and chances are high that you'll learn a ton.

With that in mind, enjoy this week's news!

Dawid Dylowicz  

Flake-Free Test Automation with Reflect

Tired of end-to-end tests that constantly break? Reflect is an alternative to Selenium and Cypress that lets you create automated tests in minutes, without writing a line of code. Sign up for free and create your first test today.

reflect.run  

Designing a QA Strategy for a Machine Learning application

The goal of this article is to serve as a guide for all the quality analysts facing the need of designing a test plan for a system that implements an artificial intelligence model based on supervised learning.

More and more applications use machine learning nowadays so this guide by Leonardo Pace may come in handy sooner than you think!

A good addition to that is this solid article by Enrique A Decoss on Machine Learning & Quality Assurance.

medium.com  

How to write a proper bug report or a ticket?

Many guides have been written on creating bug reports but this one by Hammad Ahmed stands out thanks to the focus on the practical part of "how", including instructions on how to capture screenshots, videos and logs.

Note: If you can't access the full article, simply open it in a private tab.

medium.com  

Mind maps for Software Testing

Mind maps can be very helpful for software testers, as explained in this rich-in-references article by Sam Connelly.

bughuntersam.com  

Quality Advocates

This great quote about the evolving role of software testers by Alan Page is more relevant than ever. Thanks for reminding us, Alister Scott.

alisterbscott.com  

Automating End to End API Testing Flows Guide

This is a VERY detailed and full of examples guide by David Goichman on how to set up and run API tests using the free TestProject tool.

testproject.io  

Automated Testing Nightly Run

I liked this nicely written article by Hui Ching Lim describing what nightly builds are, why it's good to run regression tests against them and how to do it.

Note: If you can't access the full article, simply open it in a private tab.

medium.com  

E2E Testing with Cypress

Kiran Parajuli did a great job preparing this thorough guide on end-to-end test automation with Cypress. It shows how to set it up, write first tests, configure the CI integration and even add a BDD layer on top. I found it easy to follow thanks to the big amount of code examples.

And for more details on CI integration, here's a decent guide on Integrating Cypress with Github CI by Ifeoma Imoh.

dev.to  

Fixing a Test Hourglass

In this article, Alan Myrvold shares some practical pieces of advice on how to rework testing layers to focus more on unit and integration tests instead of the end-to-end tests. In other words, turning the hourglass back into a pyramid.

googleblog.com  

Learning Python Test Automation

Python is commonly used in test automation. Simon Knight spent years sharing about it and this article sums up the very best pieces that he created or found which can help you learn it, too.

automationpanda.com  

What I stole from the best developers

When it comes to best practices, there's nothing wrong about stealing them. Bart Vanherck shares three valuable practices from developers that software testers can apply in test automation.

On the other hand, Dennis Martinez shared his Top Blunders with Test Automation and what he learned from that.

thetestingpirate.be  

Top 10 CI/CD Tools — Which is Best for You?

This is a helpful comparison of the most popular CI tools, including a fair overview of each one's pros and cons by Harish Rajora.

testproject.io  

I love the QA's reaction... 😂