Mike Harris' Testing and Quality Blog
I have started to automate tests in Playwright with TypeScript. I am now writing standards for the tests. I view writing the standards as a journey because I am adding to the standards as I learn more. I have started to create these standards because: I have found lots of useful advice in testing and …
Continue reading “Writing test automation standards is a journey, not a destination”
Recently it was pointed out to me that Playwright has a test generator and that I could use it to record tests. Many automated testing tools include a tool or extension that can be used to record tests. I don’t find them useful. My experience of using tools to record tests is that they record …
In “Black-Box Testing” Boris Beizer describes a number of useful techniques that can be used for black-box testing. He defines black-box testing as “the testing you do when you put yourself in the software user’s place to verify that it behaves the way it’s supposed to”.[1] Each testing technique is described in a chapter which …
Continue reading “A review of “Black-Box Testing” by Boris Beizer”
There is a discussion in the DORA Community about “the problem with DORA metrics is that they focus on maximizing outputs rather than outcomes”. Some people have argued that Dora metrics will reward teams with a high number of commits, which would be considered ‘output’ but not reward teams whose commits benefit customers, which would …
W. Edwards Deming is often referred to as the “grandfather of quality”, and this new well-researched book about him and his philosophy gives us many new and useful insights. The book’s author, John Willis, is one of the people who created DevOps, and he says that to understand the roots of DevOps you need to …
When I create or maintain an automated test I use a “learning loop” so that I learn from the test results. This enables me to create stable test packs that return accurate results. I automate tests with Playwright using TypeScript and with the low code tool Ghost Inspector. The “learning loop” is the same for …
I am a lone tester and I work with two development teams. It is not possible to give both teams one hundred per cent of my time. If I don’t have a structure as to how to support both teams I can end up being pulled in multiple directions. The structure I use is that …
Recently I was fortunate to visit the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. The Henry Crown Space Center in the museum has the Aurora 7 capsule from NASA’s Project Mercury. It was piloted by Scott Carpenter and orbited the Earth in 1962. The capsule is only two meters long. It was a surprise to …
Continue reading “Some “new” practices are actually quite “old””
A tester’s role is not only to do the testing but also to improve quality. I visited the site of the former Hawthorne Works during a recent trip to Chicago because so many innovations in quality started there. The Hawthorne Works was the Bell Telephone Laboratories site that manufactured the hardware for the first national …
We can make it easier to automate tests by giving feedback if incorrect values are passed as parameters. Developers can get feedback when they try to pass an invalid parameter if I use union types when using TypeScript. I have been using TypeScript to automate tests with Playwright. We often pass strings to functions as …
Continue reading “Make test automation easier with better feedback for parameters with TypeScript”
BCS SIGiST’s Summer Conference 2023 was a great success. We had more speakers and more attendees than at our previous conference. Everyone I spoke to enjoyed the conference and asked when the next one would be. I got a real buzz from the day of the conference! It was great to hear so many great …
Continue reading “I got such a buzz from the SIGiST23 testing conference!”
The Art of Software Testing is a book that I often refer to. The book contains valuable views on how to approach testing and clear descriptions of some test case design methodologies. It was first published in 1979 by Glenford J. Myers and an updated third edition was published in 2012. The book starts with …
Continue reading “A review of “The Art of Software Testing””
Automated tests can be run multiple times with different values by parameterising tests. Parameterising your tests can improve test coverage because a value in the test can be parameterised which means that the test can iterate through a number of values. This enables one automated test to cover a number of test cases. You could, …
Continue reading “Improve test coverage by parameterising tests with Playwright and other tools”
Teams whose focus includes testability are more likely to be high performing.[1] Good testability will “minimize testing costs”[2]. Testability can also be seen as one of the factors that determine quality. When the testability of a feature is discussed people often ask what is meant by testability. The clearest definition of testability I have found …
Continue reading “How can you improve the testability of your product?”
“The ability to work and deliver in small batches is especially important” [1], which is why many development teams work in small batches. Scrum teams work in small batches by limiting the work they plan to do in a sprint. Kanban teams work in small batches by limiting the work in progress. Working in small …
Continue reading “Why we should work in small batches – a story from Japan”
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