Testtalks | Automation Awesomeness | Helping You Succeed With Test Automation

Happy Holidays! I'm taking the last week of December off, but just wanted to THANK YOU for listening to Test Talks in 2015 and share some quick plans for 2016 to make Test Talks even better.

Today’s episode is going to be a little bit different. Since we’re nearing the end of the year, I thought I’d share with you the Test Automaton Playbook presentation I gave at the Øredev Conference in Sweden this past November.I’ve had the privilege of interviewing some of the biggest names in the testing and automation field in 2015, and I think my presentation summed up all the lessons and good practices I’ve picked during those interviews.

In this episode, we’ll talk with Scott Nimrod about Software Craftsmanship and how to take your development and testing efforts to a new level. Discover some modern testing techniques that can really improve the quality of your unit testing and automation testing efforts.Scott’s enthusiasm and hustle around self improvement and making development efforts awesome really shine through in this can’t-miss episode for folks that are serious about testing and development.

In this episode we’ll talk with Mark Collin, author of Mastering Selenium WebDriver. Mark will share with us how to create an extensible test framework, as well as how to write clear, simple, readable and reliable tests that perform complex test automation tasks. If you’re a Selenium automation engineer and are ready to take your Selenium efforts to the next level, this episode is a must-listen.

Virtualization, Cloud Deployments and Cloud-Based Tools have challenged and changed performance testing practices. Today’s performance tester can summon tens of thousands of virtual users from the Cloud in a few minutes at a cost far lower than the expensive, on-premise installations of yesteryear. These newer environments can also cause us to struggle to understand our performance results and have to puzzle out the essential message in each.In this episode, Eric discusses strategies for engaging with these new contexts, performance testing them effectively. He also explains how to better interpret performance test result and create better reporting.  

Projects can fail for many reasons. Some fail because they test the wrong things. Others fail because they test too much. In this episode Todd H. Gardner, an enterprise consultant and founder of TrackJs, shares his many years of development experience in testing atrocities (AKA terrible testing) and what we can learn from them. You’ll come away questioning your own testing. So let’s forget about our long-held testing dogmas and start doing a better job of testing the right things in our software.  

In this episode, Andy from the podcast Testing Bias shares some insights from his years of testing experience. You’ll discover the shift in testing we all need to be aware of, as well as which skills you’ll need in the coming years. We’ll also touch on a few hot topic issues like Schools of Testing as well as, “Can developers do testing?”

In this episode we’ll be talking with Vladimir Khorikov, author of the Pluralsight course Automating UI Tests for WPF Applications. Discover how to create a maintainable, automated test suite for your WPF application using the open-source framework White. Vladimir will guide us through the process of building a White automation framework and share some of his tips and best practices along the way.

In this episode, we’ll hear about a real world automation success story from Neil from Physicians Mutual. Neil shares the steps he took to implement a successful, large-scale automation effort for his company. So roll up your sleeves and get ready to learn some actionable best practices that you can use in your own automation efforts.

When it comes to performance testing, sometimes the best thing you can do is Just Do It. With open-source performance testing options, it’s never been easier to get started. And the best place to start is in CI. In this episode, Michael Sage from BlazeMeter shares which tools and techniques you should use to get started with your Continuous Performance testing efforts. You’ll discover how to get it done.

I’ve been involved with test automation for over 15 years, and I’m amazed that to this day there are misconceptions about test automation that most managers are not even aware of. In this episode you will discover my top 5 things your boss probably doesn’t understand about test automation, and why you need to educate him or her ASAP.

How can we deliver what we’ve made to our customers as early as possible, as well as get faster feedback from our product users? To achieve this, more and more companies are moving toward a continuous delivery process. How does automation fit into this paradigm shift? In this episode Sahas, shares tons of real world experience with us about how to make our CI/ automation testing efforts awesome.

We are currently living in what some are calling the API economy. With mobile app development, modern DevOps practices and newer architecture like micro-servers, API’s are everywhere. They might even be in your shower. So it’s important that we have a process in place to help us monitor and test all our APIs. In this episode, Neil Mansilla, head of developer relations at Runscope, shares with us how to take our API monitoring and testing efforts to the next level.

Today we’ll be test talking with Brian Okken, author of Python Testing with UnitTest, Nose & Pytest, and host of the new Python Test Podcast. Get ready to discover some cool Python testing techniques, including how to use Python for embedded testing and more.

Want to take your mobile app development and testing CI efforts to the next level? Does it take you a long time to deploy your apps? Ship.io can help. Ship.io was developed specifically for Continuous Delivery or native iOS and Android mobile apps to help you easily build, test, deploy and ship quality apps faster.Tim Rosenblatt, an engineer at Ship.io, shares with us how to improve our mobile app CI efforts.

Not sure if you should test your mobile app against a simulator, emulator or real device? Testing against a real device would be optimal, but do you really have the budget or time to set up your own mobile testing lab? No worries SauceLabs just got even better with their announcement of a new feature that allows customers to test their mobile apps across the full spectrum of simulators, emulators and real devices using one platform as part of their DevOps workflow. Lubos Parobek, Vice President of Product at SauceLabs, shares with us his unique insight on all the benefits of easily testing mobile apps in SauceLabs’ cloud.

Is QA dead? You might be surprised by the answer.Today we test talk with Jess Sussna, author of Designing Delivery: Rethinking IT in the Digital Service Economy, who shares with us his view of Cybernetics and 21st century IT, and what happens to QA in a DevOps world.The book covers how service quality is about more than designing capabilities, but is about making -- and keeping --promises to customers. In this episode you’ll learn how to make IT a full partner in the ongoing conversations you have with your customers, and why QA is an important part of this transformation.So listen up and discover the ways in which QA is more important than ever, as well as how QA test engineers will actually thrive in the years to come.

In my experience, one of the most significant improvements to my team’s automation code has been due to the inclusion of all our test artifacts in our code reviews. Also -- if you’re a developer doing code reviews, you should be involving your QA resources to help gain fresh perspective for things that you may not have thought of. Everyone on your development team benefits from code reviews, because the sooner bugs are caught the better it is for everyone.  Today we’ll be Test Talking with Justin Collier, the product owner of the SmartBear peer code review tool Collaborator. Justin shares his experience in helping teams succeed with productive code reviews. In this episode you’ll discover the secrets to conducting awesome code reviews for all your coding efforts (including automation code).

With more and more companies making the shift-left in their development process there is increase pressure on development teams to be able to run their automated test quickly and reliably. Peter Kim shares with us his modern automation approach that allows his team to quickly scale their test coverage against rapidly changing applications with minimal refactoring and code changes to their test scripts. In this episode you'll discover the secret to building automation frameworks that scale.

In this episode you’ll discover how to orchestrate your testing/Agile efforts to run in automation harmony with QASymphony’s qTest platform as we Test Talk with Kyle Cochran, VP of Product at QASymphony.Test Management is a key tool in any Agile automation effort in order to succeed in today’s fast-paced development environment.Kyle shares why he believes test management can help teams collaborate and enhance their test automation/development efforts.