Testing Guidewire & Beyond #6

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

• "16 Years of Brutally Honest Automation Advice in 30 Mins" Nikolay Advolodkin reveals the hard-hitting truths he's discovered throughout his 16-year career in software engineering and test automation
• "Why Do Some Software Engineers Leapfrog Up The Career Ladder?" Ryan Murphy explores career progression patterns in technology, arguing that while some people seem to "leapfrog" ahead quickly, true advancement comes from a combination of three key factors: being in the right environment (luck), taking genuine ownership of projects beyond just coding, and consistently performing well in your current role before reaching for the next one.
• "How To Achieve Clean Code In Test Automation?" Uros Simic explains how to achieve clean code in test automation, arguing that despite the pressure to deliver tests quickly, following clean code principles like meaningful naming conventions, single-responsibility functions, and thoughtful implementation of waits is crucial for long-term maintainability and understanding of test code.
• "Test smart: how to apply automation and stay sane?" Julia Kocbek reflects on the evolving role of automation in QA testing, using a visit to Leonardo da Vinci's museum as a jumping-off point to discuss how while automation tools (including AI-driven ones) are valuable for repetitive tasks, they shouldn't completely replace human testing - advocating instead for a balanced approach that combines automation for routine tests with human intuition and creativity for more complex testing scenarios.
• "Keeping tests green. Stability and trust in test automation" Ivan Karaman and ?? James Espie explored the problem of trusting your automation and ways to stabilize your tests.

Testing Practices & Insights

• "Microservices Testing: Feature Flags vs. Preview Environments" Arjun Iyer explains the trade-offs between feature flags and preview environments for testing microservices, using an e-commerce application example to demonstrate how each approach has distinct advantages - feature flags for controlled production rollouts and preview environments for isolated testing - ultimately recommending a hybrid approach that combines both methods for optimal testing outcomes.
• "5 Essential Tips to Accelerate Your Software Testing Career" Barry Ehigiator shares five essential tips for accelerating a software testing career based on his presentation at The Testing Planet, emphasizing the importance of identifying your testing purpose, understanding your product deeply, building team relationships, maintaining curiosity, and continuously developing your testing knowledge - all while cautioning against trying to learn everything at once.
• "Tester vs Quality Engineer: Which One Are You?" Cassandra H. Leung explores the differences between tester and quality engineer. Follow this topic later with Michael Bolton explaining that testing is not equal to quality.
• "Testing Activity Templates" Rahul Parwal shares his amazing set of templates which can speed up everyone's work.
• "Digging Through Data Is Testing" Wayne Roseberry shares his experience of testing through data analysis, describing how he investigated production logs from Google Cloud Platform to understand user behavior patterns. He explains how examining API call patterns with his testing team revealed unexpected usage patterns, timing issues, and potential system problems - demonstrating that valuable testing insights can come from analyzing existing data rather than just executing new tests.
• "Is domain knowledge important for software engineers?" Craig Risi explores the complex relationship between technical expertise and domain knowledge in software engineering, arguing that while industry-specific knowledge is valuable, strong technical skills should take priority since they're more transferable and fundamental to building quality software, though companies can bridge this gap through effective onboarding processes.
• "Is it really an edge case?" Callum Akehurst-Ryan challenges the common dismissal of bugs as "edge cases" in software testing, arguing that teams often incorrectly label important non-happy path scenarios (like network connectivity issues or bad user input) as edge cases to avoid dealing with them. He suggests tackling this through data-driven challenges, education through bug demonstration, building customer empathy, and creating formal processes to ensure these scenarios aren't ignored.
• "How To Fail With Software Testing" Daniel Knott shared his view on different reasons why testing could fail.

Technical Deep Dives

• "The Untold Truth About Self-Healing Automation: Beyond the Hype" Guneet Singh demystifies the reality of self-healing test automation, contrasting the hyped "set it and forget it" promise with practical experience showing that even sophisticated fallback strategies only achieve 60-70% success rates in complex applications, ultimately advocating for a realistic approach that combines automated healing with human oversight.
• "Creating a custom pytest plugin for better failure summary" Shivahari p drives us through all needed steps to create custom plugin which extends your capabilities of reporting.

?? Upcoming Events

Agile Testing Days 2024

Agile Testing Days | Nov. 19 – 22, 2024 is a 4-day conference (Onsite & Online) for international agile software testers and engineers gathered to learn, share, and network.

More than 140+ sessions, including inspiring keynotes, experience talks, hands-on workshops, and full-day tutorials covering the latest agile software testing insights for you.

Topics:

• AI in Testing
• Test automation
• Machine Learning
• Exploratory Testing
• DevOps
• Test Strategy
• and much more

Nov. 19 – 22, 2024 at Potsdam, Germany https://lnkd.in/dv-Ss46W

?? 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