Welcome to the 69th issue!

What I love about preparing this newsletter is that I learn something new every time.

This week, I discovered Test Automation Patterns Wiki.

It's a collaborative set of many interesting patterns for test automation categorised by process, management, design and execution.

I found it thanks to Uladzislau Ramanenka's article where he described three process patterns in more detail.

So have a look if you want to learn more.

Happy testing!

Dawid Dylowicz  

BugBug.io — next generation record and playback testing tool

Record reliable end-to-end tests in just a few minutes. Run & debug in your own browser and as well in the cloud. Auto-waits for elements, smart locators, Page Object Model support. Fully focused on the QA's perspective with beautiful UI/UX. Try it for free!

bugbug.io  

Analyze first, test later: How to approach your next software project

There are some valuable pieces of advice from Michael Bolton about why analysis is so important and how to prepare well for testing a project.

techbeacon.com  

Introducing Colleagues To Exploratory Testing

If you want to help other colleagues in your company learn more about exploratory testing, this practical guide by Nicola Lindgren is a great place to start.

ministryoftesting.com  

Suggestions for the (New) Testers

In yet another great article that came out this week, Michael Bolton gives a few important suggestions that can help you become a better tester.

Additionally, you may also want to read Yoni Flenner's warning about 10 mistakes to avoid as a Junior QA.

developsense.com  

The 3 Amigos in Agile

I'm a big fan of enabling early and frequent communication between product, engineering and testing/ops teams. The three amigos meeting is a great practice designed for that. Here's a brief overview of it by Anne-Marie Charrett.

mavericktester.com  

Qualities of a great QA Lead

What are the qualities of a great QA Lead? And what are the trademark actions of such? The Reddit community didn't let down with the answers.

And to learn the opposite point of view, here's another thread about how to deal with an incompetent QA Lead.

reddit.com  

Is automation really the future of this career path?

Here comes another Reddit thread that I found interesting this week. Someone is asking whether we — software testers — are "doomed" for doing test automation. I don't think it will ever become the only responsibility of testers, but it's interesting to explore this idea.

reddit.com  

It’s a Trap! Avoid Focusing on Vanity Metrics in Software Testing

Looking to set up software testing metrics? Be careful with some of them as they may lead to bad conclusions. Mark Mayo shares great examples of it.

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

itnext.io  

Reviewing and validating automated test effectiveness

Benjamin Bischoff gives us some food for thought about measuring test effectiveness and how a process of assessing it can look like.

softwaretester.blog  

Test Management within Continuous Integration Pipelines

Having thousands of tests running on CI that take forever to execute is a common and non-trivial problem. Luckily, Angie Jones explained well what you can do to handle it.

And in a more general fashion, Clive Longbottom described the pros and cons of CI/CD pipelines.

applitools.com  

Top 10 Reasons Why Test Automation Fails

Test automation is not an easy thing to do and it can fail due to many reasons. Rex Jones II listed out the common mistakes that may lead to it.

testproject.io  

9 Questions Developers Ask About Test Automation Tools & Maintenance

Katya Aronov did a great job describing this well-balanced picture of what to pay attention to when choosing test automation tools.

medium.com  

10 Essential Software Testing Tools

No single tool fits it all. Neither do ten. But when you don't know what to start with, Helena Hrubesova's great list of essential tools can help you pave the way.

youintechnology.com  

Easy to set up, easy to extend: Gatling

Olena Semiankiv describes how to set up, run the first test and generate a report with Gatling — an open-source handy load testing tool.

medium.com  

[London / Remote] Senior Software Tester and Release Manager @ Ctrl Group

Ctrl Group is looking for a Senior Software Tester to join our team and help us ship our best work. We build digital health products for patients and the people that care for them. If you have an interest in improving health through technology then we would love to hear from you!

ctrl-group.com  

Sometimes bugs are scary... 😅

Thanks for reading!

If you like this newsletter and it helps you become a better tester, you can support my work.

Dawid Dylowicz