Synopsis

This will be a comprehensive guide to helping you minimise the frequency of maintenance when it comes to your automated test scripts. This should also be useful for those familiar with writing automated testing code.

Change management affects how we maintain our tests. In the context of manual testing, it's updating test cases, test steps, and expected results (also test suites). However, for automated tests, this is in the form of updating code or updating data.

This repeats every cycle and varies in size; the number of changes needed therefore should be both minimised and clear. I must add that I’m only a junior SDET and that much of this knowledge is work-in-progress for me; these are my experiences and opinions.

Facing First-Day Anxieties

“Starting to get a bit anxious now... One minute till my first meeting starts. What do I say? Do I need to say anything? What happens if I mess up? On my first day!? This is stressful. I’ve got to do this every day.”

These thoughts raced through my mind on the first day with my first ever client, after completing the SDET Academy. Anxiety was at an all-time high, and not knowing entirely what was going to happen on the other side of that “Join Meeting” button definitely didn’t help.

Creating Effective and Maintainable Test Scripts

In my career as a tester to test manager, mastering the art of writing maintainable test scripts has been crucial for ensuring long-term project success. When developing a test plan, it’s essential to consider various types of tests, including functional testing, integration testing, and performance testing, to ensure comprehensive test coverage.

Overcoming Real-World Testing Scenarios, Inspired by the Popular Award-Winning Movie The Maze Runner

Did you know that the storytelling technique is known to be one of the most effective teaching strategies?

According to an experiment conducted by Stanford University, a story is 13 times more memorable than a statistic. 

This blog explores the automation tool Playwright through the eyes of The Maze Runner, taking you on a journey within its dystopian world. It will examine the characters' challenges within the maze, drawing a parallel to Playwright and how it benefits test automation. By doing so, the blog will highlight Playwright's resourcefulness, which mirrors the narrative within The Maze Runner.

Introduction

Hi, I’m Jane Kelly, I have worked in the IT industry focusing mostly as a manual test analyst and consultant. I've embodied various roles akin to the many hats worn by a manual tester, adapting to the evolving needs of each project.

One of the critical roles within a project involves reviewing and analysing requirements and other documents. This process includes breaking them down, designing, and writing test cases or scenarios that can be executed in a test environment to demonstrate whether the requirements have been met. This is the first area where a tester, can help a project reduce costs, by identifying poorly written, ambiguous, or misleading requirements.

Embracing Challenges: Reflections on Growth

Join me on a journey as I traverse the intricate landscapes of software testing, grappling with self-doubt, yet emerging with newfound confidence and wisdom. This is the story of a fledgling SDET navigating uncharted territories, grappling with imposter syndrome, and ultimately finding her voice in a world of uncertainty.

Insights on Recruiting Test Automation Personnel

As a business, we take pride in actively listening to our clients, prospective clients, and team members to ensure that we are consistently providing the right services to meet the evolving needs of our industry.

Through this approach, we have observed that many individuals and organisations have been facing persistent challenges when it comes to recruiting test automation professionals such as Test Automation Engineers.

Introduction to Test Automation in Software Testing

As we rapidly approach the new spring season with vigour, there is never a better time to revisit areas in our work/home lives and look at applying a fresh approach to make improvements.

The same can be said for software testing and exploring fresh ways of being innovative in the use of processes, tools and methodologies applied. The new financial year can bring new opportunities to invest in improvement initiatives and the spring season can often give rise to renewed energy, open mindsets, renewed commitment to try and apply new strategies and look to reduce none value-add activities.

How to Prepare for an Automation Testing Interview

I was recently asked to help a non-technical Test Manager to draw up a job specification for an Automation Test Engineer with at least one year’s test automation experience. Not too difficult a task as I knew the client fairly well and understood the sort of person they would need but...

The conversation turned to how would this non-technical Test Manager know if the answers given in an interview were: 

• A: right and...
• B: a reflection of the candidate’s true test automation ability

I came up with an approach that I think will work well. More about that in a moment… but first, I will explain about the problem of interview questions.

Understanding Test Automation Frameworks

Hi, my name is Ryan Dudley and I’ve been working with nFocus now for nearly 8 years, starting my journey as an apprentice. Now I class myself as a budding Technical Tester, which is not an easy role. My day-to-day tasks at the moment consist primarily of manual testing, but at any given opportunity I like to be able to do automation. As there was no capacity for me to do this on my current project, I decided to do something within my own time and challenge myself to do something which I had not done before which was choosing a test automation framework and starting from scratch.