Baby spider by Umesh Soni from unsplash

Test Automation: Don't report the bugs it catches

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Reading time: 3 minutes Don’t report the bugs your test automation catches. Report the reduction in uncertainty that the system works. When you report the bugs you send the signal that test automation is there to catch bugs. But that’s…
Testing techniques plotted on a speed, value, environment axis

Exploratory and Automated testing: Using the right techniques in the wrong contexts

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Exploratory testing is about testing in an unpredictable context and therefore detecting unpredictable failures in our software. Automated testing is about testing in a predictable context and therefore detecting predictable failures. The mistake we make with automation is we try to apply it to the wrong context
Three questions of unit testing

How to document Unit Testing

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Whenever you talk about unit testing with teams they never tell you what it means to them. They go straight to of course we do and show you 100s of passing tests. Interesting thing is by calling it unit testing everyone thinks they are talking…
Tech wall at the design museum

Building Quality in via Testability

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7 minute read Back in March 2018 I visited The Design Museum in London and came across the above installation. What you can see is technology design classics all the way from the first transistor radios on one side to the very first digital…

What is Contract Testing?

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And Consumer-driven contract testing This is a follow on from Contract testing: Why do it First some quick definitions: Consumer Is someone (a dev team for instance) that makes use of a third party component or a combination of components…
flat lay photography of circuit board by Robin Glauser

Contract Testing, Why do it?

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I’ve been thinking a lot about contract testing lately and trying to explain why it’s a good idea.  I thought I’d start by getting my initial arguments for it down and go from there. Got an opinion then let me know. Note:…
Wrong way sign

The unintended consequences of automated UI tests

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Whenever I see people talking about automated testing I always wonder what type of testing they actually mean? Eventually someone will mention the framework they are using and all too often it's a UI based automation tool that allows tests…