Testing Guidewire & Beyond #12

Dear Testing Community,

Welcome to the next issue of "Testing Guidewire & Beyond", your go-to resource for insights and best practices in Guidewire InsuranceSuite quality assurance. I'm thrilled to continue our journey of exploration and improvement in insurance software testing.

?? What I've Been Reading and Watching

Since our last issue, I've come across some fascinating content that I'd like to share with you:

Test Automation & Tools

• "Semantic Logging: Logging Intent, Not Just State" Irfan Mujagi? breaks down the concept of semantic logging, showing how to move beyond basic state-based logs to create more meaningful, context-rich log messages that better serve both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• "10 powerful tests with Chrome DevTools" Kasturi Rajamanikkam provides a detailed guide on using Chrome DevTools for testing, walking through 10 practical examples of how testers can use browser tools to investigate spacing issues, JavaScript errors, broken links, and user data flow.
• "Regular expressions can help you to do more with your automated?tests" Mike Harris CITP FBCS explains how regular expressions can enhance automated tests, showing practical examples in Playwright while emphasizing how regex offers more flexible pattern matching options than simple string matching.
• "grep for testers" James Lyndsay gives a practical guide to using grep commands for software testing, showing how to effectively search logs, find specific patterns, and monitor errors in real-time using examples from his own testing experience.
• "Diagnosing CI Bottlenecks: From Chonky Tests to Embracing Variability" Jason Aricheta analyzes CI pipeline bottlenecks, revealing how large test files and runtime variability slow down testing, and demonstrates how implementing a competing consumer pattern can reduce workflow times by 35% without adding more machines.
• "stop automating manual test cases" Veith R?thlingsh?fer explains why directly automating manual test cases is ineffective, advocating instead for a structured approach using the Arrange-Act-Assert pattern and smart test optimization techniques to create more efficient automated tests.

Testing Practices & Insights

• "Testing, terminology and misperceptions" Lisa Crispin challenges the use of 'manual tester' terminology, arguing that this label undermines the complex skills and value that testers bring, while encouraging better collaboration between developers and testers to build quality into software from the start.
• "The Ultimate Guide to Security Testing in Software Testing" Bhavani Ramasubbu gives a comprehensive guide to security testing, explaining different types, approaches, and tools while addressing common myths and emphasizing the importance of continuous testing to protect against cyber threats.
• "How do I Test AI?" James Thomas shares his insights on testing AI systems, providing a detailed checklist covering key considerations from data quality and oracle challenges to security risks and reproducibility issues, drawing from his practical experience testing AI components.
• "Dear software testers, is your critical thinking ability even alive?!" Maaike Brinkhof criticizes testers' increasing reliance on AI and test automation, arguing that these tools can undermine critical thinking skills and warning that overemphasis on productivity through automation may come at the cost of genuine learning and testing insight.

Technical Deep Dives

• "How to write simple, expressive, and powerful test fixtures for GraphQL applications" Drew Hoover demonstrates how to improve GraphQL test fixtures by combining mocking tools with TypeScript type-checking, showing how to create more maintainable and type-safe test data with less code.
• "Going deep on type-checking mock resolvers for GraphQL test fixtures" dives deeper into improving GraphQL test fixtures, showing advanced TypeScript techniques to create more precise type-checking for mock resolvers and custom scalars, making test data generation both safer and easier to maintain.

Call for Papers: Agile Testing Days 2025

Agile Testing Days | Nov. 24 - 27, 2025 invites submissions until March 30, 2025, for their conference taking place Nov. 24-27, 2025. Speakers can present 25-min talks, 105/120-min workshops (minimum 50% hands-on), bonus sessions (creative/fun activities), or social/active sessions for networking and movement.

Benefits & Conditions:

• Free 3-day conference pass
• Travel reimbursement: €700 (within Europe) or €1,400 (outside Europe)
• Up to 4 hotel nights (Nov. 23-28)
• Maximum 4 paper submissions per speaker
• Free parking at venue

Focus Areas 2025: The conference emphasizes industrial Agile adoption experiences and innovation, with hot topics including AI, DevOps, Test Automation, Security Testing, Ethics in Tech, Accessibility, and Quality Coaching.

?? We Want to Hear from You!

Found value in this newsletter? Share it with your testing community! Your feedback and suggestions help make each issue better than the last.

Best regards,

Arek Frankowski