Issue 117: Nine Reasons Testing Becomes a Bottleneck
🕒 5 MIN READ | Published on: January 10, 2024This is the Software Testing Notes, a newsletter that goes out every Wednesday. I republish it here for sharing and referencing, but if you'd like to sign up you can do so right here:
Hello there! 👋
Welcome to the 117th edition of Software Testing Notes, a weekly newsletter featuring must-read content on Software Testing. I hope this week has been good for you so far.
I finally came around to sending first issue of TestDevJobs, I’m experimenting with something different with this. Each issue of the newsletter will have newsletter only Jobs. These jobs will not be posted on the job-board for around !24 hours to give readers the head start.
Check it out below:
🚀 63 QA Jobs curated Just for you on TestDevJobs🧙
Now moving on to our curated link, brace yourself as I have articles on topics such as developing listening skills, straying from happy path testing, reasons testing becomes a bottleneck, the consequences of lack of testing, understanding synthetic testing and much more.
Enjoy reading and let me know what your favorite is by replying this email!
📚 Testing
Developing your listening skills is really useful by Mike Harris CITP FBCS
Having good listening skills one of the core part of soft skills. Mike Harris shares a technique which can be useful to improve your listening skills as a testers and how it can help building a rapport with developers, understanding different perspectives, and achieving team goals.
Writing A Test Specification That Strays From Happy Path by Wayne Roseberry
"Happy Path" can become a gold mine to uncover potential issues. Wayne Roseberry shares some insights into his thought process and methods for intentionally straying from the preferred use cases and how it can help exploring non-happy path scenarios in testing.
Nine Reasons Testing Becomes a Bottleneck by Kristin Jackvony
Very insightful article by Kristin Jackvony discussing nine reasons why testing can become a bottleneck in software development teams and suggests solutions for each of those issues to improve the testing process.
Some of the reasons that I found to be most important are,
- Inadequate acceptance criteria
- Lack of handoff meetings between developers and testers
- Lack of a process for reusing regression test plans
- Over-reliance on UI automation
How lack of testing can ruin lives - The technology problems behind the Post Office Scandal by David Burns
There has been many examples on how the lack of testing can have severe consensuses. David Burns discusses one such incident about Post Office, leading to financial discrepancies and legal actions against postmasters.
Scrutinize, Stabilize, Sustain by Jeff Nyman
Jeff Nyman emphasize the importance of scrutinizing and understanding what is being built, stabilizing the testability of the software, and sustaining testing efforts through automation.
I liked the Jeff Nyman’s observation about how “all testers should possess both testing and programming skills.” and rather than dividing between manual and automation testing, we should focus on testers as a whole.
20 Lessons Learned From 20 Years in Tech: Part 1 by Dennis Martinez
Wow. 20 years is a lot. I’m big fan of Dennis Martinez’s writing on software testing. He has put together a list of 20 lessons learned from 20 years in the tech industry. Dennis shares personal experiences and insights on topics such as career growth, exploring new opportunities, and being intentional with learning.
What are the Chances? by James Thomas
When you are telling a story, what are the chances that you are bias towards something? maybe intentionally or unintentionally? James Thomas explores one such story and highlights the biases and storytelling involved. James also suggests ways to approach testing and experimentation with a clear mission and avoiding biases.
👀 Playwright Indent List Reporter by Butch Mayhew
"indent-list-reporter"package that allows users to customize the colors and indentation of spec files in the terminal when using Playwright Test Automation.
Butch Mayhew shows how to use "indent-list-reporter" package in your day to day coding along with how to change the color scheme.
➜ Read all curated stuff on Software Testing.
⚙️ Automation
Easiest way to understand How Appium works by Millan Kaul
Millan Kaul breaks down how Appium works using four steps: the test script, the Appium server translating commands, the Appium drivers executing commands, and the interaction with mobile app elements. The article also provides a code example to demonstrate a login scenario for a social media app using Appium.
Synthetic Tests In a Nutshell🐿️ What You Need To Know About Synthetic Testing by Mihaela Sfat
Synthetic testing is a type of proactive monitoring in software testing that uses simulated scenarios to identify potential issues before real users encounter them.
Mihaela Sfat writes about how Synthetic testing can help in early issue detection, continuous monitoring, isolation of components, and baseline performance metrics.
Check Broken Images Using Cypress by Gleb Bahmutov
In this blog post, Gleb Bahmutov discusses the importance of checking for broken images on web pages using Cypress tests with a practical example.
How Do We Manage UI Tests in Sprint by Esra Cebeci
Esra Cebeci discusses the management of UI tests such as snapshot tests, smoke tests, and regression tests in the sprints. The article outlines the process of including UI tests in sprints, tracking the tests, and the goals of automation in the team.
Integration Testing Vercel Serverless Functions with OpenTelemetry by Adnan Rahić
How do you test serverless functions? If you are using Vercel, Adnan Rahić has written an nice walkthrough of how to setup distributed tracing with OpenTelemetry and Tracetest for integration testing.
➜ Read all curated stuff on Software Testing Automation.
💨 Performance
Testing Kubernetes Clusters: A Practical Guide by Gilad David Maayan
This article by Gilad David Maayan covers the importance of testing Kubernetes clusters, including assuring application functionality, operational reliability, and performance optimizations. It also discusses testing load and performance in Kubernetes, as well as testing resilience and failover.
➜ Read all curated stuff on Performance Testing.
🛠️ Resources & Tools
JWT.IS — An online debugging tool for JSON Web Tokens (JWT), a compact and self-contained way for securely transmitting information between parties as a JSON object.
GQL — Git Query Language, an SQL-like query language to perform queries on .git files with supports for most SQL features (e.g. grouping, ordering, etc).
Writerside — From JetBrains, a new authoring environment for technical writers, developers and testers, for producing documentation. Kind of like an IDE made for docs.
📝 List of Software Testers
It's hard to find good articles, podcasts on Software Testing. Even hard to find people who create them. Are you also looking for amazing software testers to follow or read their content ? check out this page dedicated to software testers.
Do you also create content around Software Testing ? Submit yours here and I will add it to the list.
🎁 Bonus Content
📌 OTHER INTERESTING STUFF
- [The Rise of AI Makes Soft Skills More Critical](http://The Rise of AI Makes Soft Skills More Critical)
- Tech doesn’t make our lives easier. It makes them faster
⭐ LAST WEEK'S MOST READ
- Handle Errors and Fallbacks in Playwright by Mike Stop Continues
- Exaggeration and Misinformation: Generative AI in Software Testing by Blake Norrish
- Dev: QA ratio A tale of burnout? Is there a better way out? by Gaurav Singh
😂 And Finally,
Me with Test Data. Everytime! 🤣
Keep Smiling and have a fun week.
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Happy Testing!
Pritesh(@priteshusdadiya)
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