The Importance of Words: Waterfall vs Agile
Waterfall methodologies are often seen as the antithesis of Agile, and therefore ‘bad’. But what does it really mean for something to be ‘waterfall’? Are you...
Recent Posts
The Importance of Words: Quality
We care a lot about the word ‘quality’ in the software industry. But what actually is quality? How do we use the word in our day to day life?
The Importance of Words
It’s natural (and inevitable) for words and phrases to change in meaning over time. But what if they were chosen for a purpose, but their meaning changes eno...
Prisoner’s Dilemma in Testing: A Mini-Waterfall Simulation
A sustainable development process needs checks and balances to ensure we move forward as quickly as we can safely. But what happens when there are none?
“What would QA do all day?”
If the developer wrote the tests for their tickets, what would QA do all day? More importantly, what are the implications of that question being asked in the...
The Harmful Obsession With DRY
The intent of DRY is to help us find potential opportunities for abstraction. Many take it to mean we should never repeat a block of code. However, this inte...
Grey Box Testing: Less Is More
What is grey box testing? How can it benefit us? How is it different from white or black box testing? Are they all required? Do they dictate how we design ou...
1 Assert Per Test
You’ve heard it before, and probably many times. But why exactly is it the rule that should only have 1 assert per test?
Should SDETs Write Unit Tests?
Whose responsibility is it too write unit tests? Should SDETs know how to write effective unit tests?
Let’s Talk About Cypress
There’s some fundamental issues with the claims that Cypress makes of themselves that need to be acknowledged. Let’s take a look at their claims and see if t...
Is Selenium Actually Flaky?
We’ve all gotten frustrated dealing with flakiness once we start involving Selenium in our tests. But is Selenium really the problem? What can we do to solve...
Grey Box Testing - React Redux Part 2: Cutting the Fat
The usage of React and Redux together creates fantastic opportunities for refining tests. Let’s go over one of those opportunities and the benefits it provid...
Grey Box Testing - React Redux Part 1: A Primer
Before we can refine our tests to take advantage of React and Redux, we first have to understand what they do for us, and a little bit about how they do it.
Scientific Testing Part 3: Leveraging Confidence
Now we know how to maximize test validity. But how can we leverage that in other ways than just providing test results to someone else?
Scientific Testing Part 2: Validity
The validity of tests helps build our confidence in them and determines the value they add to our test suites. But what does it mean for a test to be ‘valid’?
Scientific Testing Part 1: Getting Back on the Right Track
Software tests are a form of scientific research and should be treated with the same scrutiny. To show this, let’s go over what ‘science’ is.
Building Good Tests
A collection of testing maxims, tips, and gotchas, with a few pytest-specific notes. Things to do and not to do when it comes to writing automated tests.