alikhalid

“How long before you typically ‘hand over’ automation”,

While THE question might be valid in certain circumstance, it completely misses the spirit.

Automation can NEVER be ‘handed over’ and be done with it (unfortunately),

Simply because as your application evolves, so should your testing, and so should your automation,

Wishing for the day when automation will become ‘automatic’ is an absoltely wrong goal to have.

Linking an article further elaborating on the subject.

#QsDaily #automation #testing #roi

Building a test arsenal is THE MOST important aspect of automation,

Yes, that’s right for automation, because the automated scripts are as good as WHAT they are ‘checking’..

Often the focus shifts from inadequate testing practices to directly building automation,

While investing in automation is essential, equally important is ‘finding’ the scenarios to test.

Unless there is a great ‘Testing acumen’ built within the team, that automation is not going to give the desired results.

All automation will do is reduce the ‘checking’ time you spend, and if you are not very sure what to test, then what’s the point?

It’s like trading in a car for a jet, but not sure in which direction to go in..

#QsDaily #automation #testing

A lot of candidates have a hard time finding jobs,

And employers have a hard time finding good employees too, here’s my thought on that..

Employers are looking for a very long (and many times invalid) set of skills, giving what’s really important a low priority.

Similarly, employees are not always clear on what they enjoy doing, and most end up hating their 9 – 5 jobs.

The answer, IMHO, is to find what you as a candidate are passionate about and love to work on,

And the employer to find our their core values and look for people sharing the same belief system and ENJOY working on that craft.

E.g., it’s not necessary every Java developer with 10 years of experience is passionate about working in that field (tragic really).

In the linked post (below) I talk about finding what you like doing and employers finding people who align with their values.

First, what are status codes?

For each HTTP request, there is an HTTP response generated.

There are some standard ‘status codes’ indicating if the server understood the request.

Common ones are 200 (Ok), 404 (Page not found), 500 (Internal server error) and so on.

While developing API’s sometimes they are not designed to be used by anyone other that the product’s own front end.

They can therefore become a bit sloppy in generating HTTP responses, since the front end code is going through the response body anyway.

This ‘might’ work for a handful of people, it’s generally not a great practice, and certainly makes things harder for API automation.

On that note, for automation folks even if the status codes are not used correctly, still do verify them.

Links to resources on understanding HTTP messages and responses.

Success is always uncomfortable

And it never reaches the point where it’s automatic.

Success lies outside the comfort zone,

That means we have to learn to be accustomed to being ‘uncomfortable’.

One might think after a while it might become automatic,

unfortunately it never goes to auto-pilot no matter how many years of practice you have.

It might become ‘very easy’, but never automatic.

And when I think deeper, I feel this is a good thing, it really is.

Life will keep throwing hardships and curve balls at us.

Unless we are in the HABIT of being uncomfortable, we might get knocked out in the first round.

“I don’t count my sit-ups; I only start counting when it starts hurting because they’re the only ones that count.” – Muhammad Ali

“Your network equals your net worth” – Grant CardOne

The addition I make to this, “networking for the sake of giving”..

I’ve tried to share and be helpful as much as I can

I have my moments of weakness when I loose faith, but I try to do my best.

The past few weeks I have seen a small portion of that return.

So many good wishes and kind words from my superiors, colleagues and friends,

I had faith in the return, but this is surely more than i expected.

For all out there learning to genuinely give without return, it’s an amazing life to live,

Have faith, the return is there and it’s many times more.

“The trick in life is not what you can get, it’s what you can give” (Dr Suzan Jefferson)

It will show itself in time, be patient, be your higher self, be awesome.

Before I had used Jenkins, never felt the need for it.

In reality, I ‘Didn’t know that I DIDN’T KNOW!’ (Stages of knowledge)..

For a long time, I never felt the need for it, nightly runs would work fine, and life was merry

The ‘itch’ began when other team members were not able to access the reports easily

The common solution to this is sending a ‘heap’ of emails for which then the receivers have to use ‘rules’ to pile them in specific folders straight away

All I wanted was a central place from where everyone can access the results

As time passed and we became proficient with Jenkins, now I feel we cannot survive without it!

When I think back to the ‘simpler’ days, there was A LOT we were not able to do and facilitate consuming automation’s results

Bottom line, if you are not using some form of CI tool like Jenkins, do consider it even if there is no plan for CI / CD in your team.

#QsDaily #automation #continuousintegration #jenkins

“Is every automation framework as complex as what we have learned”?

A question from one of the automation training participants, this was my answer:

“Certainly not, most projects DO NOT have such a complex framework, few companies would be happy if you could just write a few lines using Selenium.”

“However, the teams that make a difference and don’t get fired few months after they’ve started, DO have complex frameworks like this one”

In the training we did a simple test with all the code in one file, it seemed very simple and easy to understand.

The next step was to build a framework and learn how to ‘architect’ a proper structure, which off course seemed hard and unnecessarily complex for one test.

The easy way is not necessarily always the best way. Be sure you do the ‘right thing’, not just the easy one.

BTW the ‘easy’ automation scripts have a flakiness percentage anywhere between 30 – 80%, you’re better off NOT doing automation at all there.

The hard way can get you a flakiness percentage UNDER 2%, makes all the difference.

#QsDaily #automation #frameworkdesign #training

Around 60 – 96% of communication is non-verbal as per different researches

What does that mean for us testers?

The impact of this is VERY LARGE, however here was one lesson I learned and shared with my team today:

We humans are communicating or sending messages to one another all the time

Even when we are not talking to someone, we still are communicating.

Can you guess how and why?

Most communication is ‘NON-VERBAL’,60 – 90% communication is still going on depending on the circumstance.

And we do this all the time, when we someone pass by, we do instantly create an impression of that person in our head, willingly or unwillingly

That’s non-verbal, and its far more important than I used to think about it.

A tester’s job revolves around (or should revolve around) A LOT of communication, and we NEED to be on speed terms with others

To come across as an open and welcoming person will go a long way in communicating effectively with developers, support and other people in the company.

It will set the tone to a very favorable condition helping the exchange of information and ideas.

#QsDaily, #testers #communication