Go gaga over Machine Learning

Recently at our STAG(Software Test Automation Group) meetup we had Kate Droukman who presented how we could learn and use LeanFT. Source: http://www.meetup.com/Software-Test-Automation-Group/events/230219080/

Test Automation Anti-patterns: There is enough data out there which explains what testing anti-patterns are, we will look at some of the most interesting test automation anti-patterns here: The first one and the most important one is the right amount of UI testing in the testing pyramid: Whenever we talk to most stakeholders about test automation, they think about UI automation. "A team is doing too much UI automation when they are finding NPEs (Null pointer exceptions) via their UI automated tests ." Manual Session based testing is a fancy way of saying exploratory testing Automated API tests are the best bang for the buck wrt tests that are easy to write and stable and a reliable signal. Integration Tests are always valuable; but we need to ration the number of integration tests one writes as they can be more difficult to debug and have a high noise factor due to all the moving pieces Automated component testing allows one to test a particular co...

Q. What are hermetic tests? A. Tests should be hermetic: that is, they ought to access only those resources on which they have a declared dependency . If tests are not properly hermetic then they do not give historically reproducible results. This could be a significant problem for culprit finding (determining which change broke a test), release engineering auditability, and resource isolation of tests (automated testing frameworks ought not DDOS a server because some tests happen to talk to it). Q. How Hermetic servers are used for E2E testing? A. Google uses this trick to  design their end-to-end tests. What is a Hermetic Server? The short definition would be a “server in a box”. If you can start up the entire server on a single machine that has no network connection AND the server works as expected, you have a hermetic server! \ Q. How do you design a Hermetic server? A. 1. All connections to other servers are injected into the server at runtime using a suita...

Here is another amazing podcast on how LeanFT is used straight from the HP LeanFT team : Thanks to Joe who runs these wonderful podcasts. Source:  http://www.joecolantonio.com/2016/04/14/episode-07-title-podcast/

Source:  http://www.excelacom.com/resources/blog/2016-update-what-happens-in-one-internet-minute

In continuation from my previous  series of posts  targeting testing in top few companies from the technology space. After  Software Testing @Facebook  and @Google  we shall now look at Microsoft: Testing@Microsoft Software Development Engineers in Test (SDETs) are usually just called Test and sometimes Software Testing. SDETs are responsible for maintaining high testing and qualityassurance standards for all Microsoft products. Software Development Engineers (SDEs) are often referred to as Software Development. SDEs write the code that drives Microsoft products and upgrades. Very few teams in Microsoft are still using SDETs to do significant amount of manual testing. Manual testing is mainly outsourced. Actually, as early as in 2004, for example, most of the manual testing of MSN Explorer was outsourced. Think about it this way: it just doesn't make sense for test manager to spend their headcount (SDETs) on something can be easily outsourced....

In continuation from my previous  series of posts targeting testing in top few companies from the technology space. After Software Testing @ Facebook  we shall now look at Google: Testing@Google Test exists within a Focus Area called Engineering Productivity . Eng Prod owns any number of horizontal and vertical engineering disciplines, Test is the biggest. A product team that produces internal and open source productivity tools that are consumed by all walks of engineers across the company. We build and maintain code analyzers, IDEs, test case management systems, automated testing tools, build systems, source control systems, code review schedulers, bug databases... The idea is to make the tools that make engineers more productive. Tools are a very large part of the strategic goal of prevention over detection. A services team that provides expertise to Google product teams on a wide array of topics including tools, documentation, testing, release management...

This topic has always been of interest by testers who like to understand how some of the best companies perform testing in their organization. Based on my research and what's on internet here are some very interesting snippets. I will try to keep this updated as and when I hear more but at the same time will have a series of posts  targeting the top few companies in the technology space. We shall start with Facebook here: Testing@Facebook Places huge emphasis on individual engineers making sure their changes are legit Strong shame culture around making irresponsible changes to the site, the apps, etc. (see  What are the roots of 'clowning' or 'clowny behavior' or 'clowntown' at Facebook?  and to a lesser but tone-setting extent  When people who work at Facebook say "clowntown" , what do they mean? )  I f you do something really bad (i.e. take the site down, kill the egress of the site in a significant way) you may get a photo of yourself...

I am sure most of you who read blogs / LinkedIn posts would have seen this image: If you can't see the image open it in a new tab. What's interesting here is to think of ways to test these next generation apps/platforms/software /hardware let alone automate them. Applications Personal  Wearables Fitness Health Entertainment Family Sports Toys Elderly Home Automation Hubs Security Kitchen Sensing Consumer Robotics Pets Garden Trackers Vehicles Automobiles Autonomous UAVs Space Bikes/Motorcycles Enterprise Healthcare Retail Payments/Loyalty Smart Office Agriculture Infrastructure Industrial Internet Machines Energy Supply Chain Robotics Industrial Wearables Platforms and Enablements Platforms Software Full Stack Developer Analytics Sensor Networks Connectivity Security  Open Source Interfaces Virtual Reality Augmented Reality Others 3D Printing/Scanning Content/Design Building Blocks Har...