“Thinking in Systems: Primer” is a great resource that can help you whether you are beginning, or have already started your systems thinking journey. Meadows helps us understand what a system is. “A system is an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organised in a way that achieves something”[1]. “Once we see the relationship …
Tag Archives: technology
Collaborative customer-focused systems thinking – a review of Sys-Tao: Western Logic – Eastern Flow by Bob Browne
In this book, Bob Browne recounts how he drew on ideas from both the East and the West, including the philosophies of W. Edwards Deming and Eli Goldratt, to make the Great Plains Coca-Cola Bottling Company a success. In 1980, Bob Browne, with the help of a few others, acquired the Great Plains Coca-Cola Bottling …
We can learn so much from how AI got here – A review of Rebels of Reason by John Willis with Derek Lewis
Much like the aliens in the sci-fi movie Arrival, AI has now arrived. Rebels of Reason tells us how AI arrived, and in doing so, provides us with a deeper understanding of AI. “We learn how foundational ideas have been refined over time, informing the rapid technological advances of our era”[1]. AI has been developed …
Learning from winners
When we are testing it helps to be aware of the perspectives of people who work in other fields within IT. I attended an audience with the 2024 British Computer Society Lovelace and Society Medal winners. It was great to hear talks from the medal winners and to network at the event. Listening to the …
There are advantages to using the API to tear down automated end-to-end tests
When I automate a test I create a clean starting position for each test so that the automated tests can run concurrently. “The establishment of a known-good starting position for the test before it is run, and its re-establishment at its conclusion, is vital to avoid cross-test dependencies”[1]. Re-establishing the start position of the test …
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How do testers assist organisational learning?
“Most organisations focus on the acquisition, processing of data and information….but data, information and knowledge are not all that can be learned, there is also understanding and wisdom”[1] Testers contribute to each of these types of learning. “These five types of mental content form a hierarchy of value; data have the least value, wisdom the …
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Using recognised techniques to create tests gives teams advantages
Creating tests using recognised techniques, such as boundary value analysis, enables teams to create more efficient tests and is a basis for learning about testing. Recognised techniques for creating tests provide a way of analysing functionality that enables the creation of more efficient tests. Teams that use techniques to design tests for their code have …
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Interpreting ‘quality’ in more than one way helps me uncover issues
Each project has different requirements, and each set of requirements makes its own demands on ‘quality’. On every project I work on, I find it useful to interpret ‘quality’ in more than one way. Interpreting quality is more helpful than defining it. A definition is definitive whereas you can have many interpretations. It is useful …
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To copy a testing process “is to invite disaster”
Sometimes, we hear about a company that creates high-quality software. The company has great testing and quality processes, so we think about copying their ideas to improve our process. “If anyone were to study such a company without theory, i.e. without knowing what questions to ask,” they “would be tempted to copy the company”[1]. The …
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Generic functions help me to reduce the amount of Playwright test automation code
One of the challenges in writing automated tests is to have a low maintenance cost of the tests. Creating a library of functions in a Page Object Model helps because the test can reuse the functions in the library. Typescript generic functions within my Playwright Page Object Model also help me, in some situations, to …
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Why does testing take so long?
Sometimes testers are asked ‘why does testing take so long?’ The question should not make testers feel defensive. We should always be looking to improve our test process. Testers can use a technique from Toyota to answer the question and improve our process. Testers want their testing to flow easily from one task to the …
Do outages have to be the new normal?
Yesterday I was using a testing tool and it had an outage. Today I was automating a test when a third party had an outage and delayed my test automation. Even the third party’s Status page was not functioning. Social media was full of people complaining about the outage. Outages impacted two consecutive days of …
Make your Playwright tests run faster by using the Playwright API to wait
There are times when automating a test in Playwright that the test needs to wait because the test will flake if it does not wait for something such as an event. It can be, for example, that you are waiting for a navigation to complete. Tests can be made to wait with a ‘wait’ for …
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Learning from CrowdStrike with Taguchi
The recent CrowdStrike incident is estimated to have “affected 8.5 million Windows devices” [1] and may have been “the worst cyber event in history” [1] How should we understand its impact on quality? Genichi Taguchi’s definition of quality helps us understand how the CrowdStrike incident affected quality. He wrote that “quality is the loss a …
Use code reviews to have discussions about your test automation code
Learning from discussions originating from code reviews is helping me create a pack of automated tests using TypeScript and Playwright. I have been developing a pack of Playwright tests with a Page Object Model. A simplified example of a page in the Page Object Model looked something like this: A simplified example of a test: …
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