Testtalks | Automation Awesomeness | Helping You Succeed With Test Automation

One of the biggest challenges I’ve seen for large teams all across the globe is a lack of collaboration. In this episode you’ll discover how to break down some of the barriers that separate your project management group, development group, business, and especially your QA group, and ensure that those teams are working as a unit with Sanjay Zalavadia, VP of Client Services at Zephyr.

How often have you found yourself doing a long, manual, repetitive administrator task on a Windows box and thinking that there has to be a better way? Well, you’re right -- and PowerShell may be exactly what you’re looking for. Don’t be a “click next” admin! Listen to Adam Bertram, author of the Pluralsight PowerShell Toolmaking Fundamentals course, as he shares a bunch of tips on using PowerShell to automate the drudgery of some Windows-based tasks.  

Discover new and existing functionality to make your Sauce Labs automation tests even more awesome. Steve Hazel, CTO and co-founder of Sauce Labs, shares his deep development knowledge of how to make your tests run reliably in Sauce. Steve also reveals some cool new UI features recently added to Sauce Labs to make your Sauce automation experience even better.

In this episode, discover my top takeaways from this year’s HP Discover conference, and get a sneak peek of the new HP automation tool that is going to blow your mind.

In this episode, Al Sweigart shares how easy it is for someone with little-to-no programming experience can get started automating some of the most boring tasks that fill our days.   Whats great about this is you’ll find automation can be used for much more than your typical end-to-end functional testing scenarios. So if you’ve struggled in the past to learn a programming language for test automation, today you’re going to discover it’s much easier to get started than you probably think.

There is nothing worse than sour BDD. You know -- the kind that is unreliable, unreadable and unmaintainable yet still need to be maintained somehow. Discover a better way with Seb Rose, the author of The Cucumber for Java Book, as he shares some of the best ways to create robust, sweet BDD (Behavior Driven Development) that will leave you satisfied and your customers delighted.

As the dawn of the Internet Of Things Era begins testers and developers need a better way to test the functionality of their growing API, cloud based software applications. One of the new tools/techniques developed for this purpose is the concept of Service Virtualization. Find out why Service Virtualization is so important and why you need it to have confidence that your modern application will work as expected in the wild.

My mother passed away in December after fighting a progressively debilitating disease for many years. The past months have been a time of reflection for me. My mother taught me many things about life, instilling principles that have made me not only a better person but also a better test automation engineer. In this episode, I’d like to share a few of those things with you.

This is the 50th episode of Test Talks, and I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate than to feature an interview with the CEO of TestTalks’ Exclusive Sponsor, Sauce Labs. In this episode you’ll discover why Sauce Is Boss as I speak with the new CEO of Sauce Labs, Charles Ramsey about his vision for Sauce Labs and how Sauce's awesome products and services can help you succeed with all your testing, automation & CI efforts.

Protractor is an automated testing framework for testing AngularJS applications in the browser. In this episode you'll discover all the benefits of using Protractor to test your AngularJs application as we speak with Nate Taylor, author of the PluralSight course's Introduction to Protractor and TDD as a Design Tool.

Want to know what a bucket of bottlenecks is? You’ll find out today as we talk with PerfBytes’ Mark Tomlinson. Not performance testing your application can be dangerous. Don't be left singing the performance testing blues after being featured on the PerfBytes’ News of the Damned. In this episode the Performance Sherpa, Mark Tomlinson who has over 20 years of testing experience, helps guide those new to performance testing over the rough terrain of getting started with their performance efforts -- no matter how daunting the task may seem. So get ready to bring your performance testing efforts to a whole new level!

Can automation perform actual testing? What’s the difference between test automation and automation in testing? Discover a mind-shift that will help you improve your testing efforts and take your automation to the next level. In this episode, your friendly tester will free you from the common misunderstandings and myths of test automation and leave you smiling. Check it out!

The Apple Watch is coming. Are you ready? With the release of the much-anticipated watch happening in less than a month, I thought it would be fun to talk about iOS testing. This episode should help you get up-to-speed with iOS testing and start thinking about how you’re going to test Apple Watch apps. Andy Obusek is an iOS mobile developer at the popular Email marketing firm AWeber, and he shares some of his favorite IOS tips and tricks with us.

For the past few years I've been trying to promote the idea that not every automation test should be a UI test, and have been focusing more on the types of tests that can be performed below the UI, like API testing. With the rise of the Internet of Things, this type of headless testing is only going to become more popular. One of the tools I use all the time for REST-based API testing is rest-assured. In this episode, we’ll talk to the creator of the open-source tool’s REST-Assured, Power Mock and Awaitility, Johan Haleby.

Have you ever wondered how testing is done at big companies like Microsoft? Curious to know what it takes to succeed with testing and automation across a huge enterprise that has bunch of different products and technologies? Alan has seen it all, and shares his years of testing wisdom. Your ears will be ringing from all the test automation awesomeness knowledge bombs Alan will drop on you in this episode.

Test Automation is difficult. It’s even harder if you need to perform any sort of visual validations in your test script. It’s often easier and more reliable to make visual validation type test into manual tests. So how do you solve this pixel predicament? If you have a “mission critical” or complex visual application that needs to have many visual elements tested, you should check out Applitools. With its sophisticated visual algorithm, Applitools makes visual validation easy and stress-free.

A New Model For Testing With more and more companies making the move to shift-left in their development processes, the thinking skills that many testers possess need to be unlocked and shared across the whole organization. Paul's new model can get us all thinking about testing as early as possible in the development life cycle. Discover how we can apply the tester’s mindset to the ever-changing development landscape that includes thing like the Internet of Things and Big Data. http://www.testtalks.com/42

Microsoft is about to release Windows 10, which many are describing as a game changer due to a bunch of innovative new features including a virtual reality headset called HoloLens and a new web browser named Spartan. Windows 10 will also have a host of new APIs that will allow developers to create applications that can run across multiple platforms. Are you ready to test Windows 10? Get an early start and listen to discover what Windows 10 means for testers.

Are you a tester who’s trying to automate something that your normal test automation tool is not recognizing? Or are you a gamer looking to create a gaming bot? Maybe you’re a combination of both. If any of those apply, this episode is for you. Today I’ll be Test Talking about the open-source, image based tool Sikuli with its core developer and maintainer, Raimund Hocke. I think this is one of the most inspiring Test Talks to date because Raimund started the Sikulix project later in life, at a time when most people stop trying new things and become learning-stagnant. Raimund is proof that it’s never too late to learn something new, and his enthusiasm for Sikuli really comes through in this interview.

In this episode you will discover how to create realistic performance tests that will enable your company to release applications in the wild that perform as expected. Scott Moore, a performance testing consultant and former CEO of Northway solutions, shares with us how to avoid red alerts and getting stuck in a performance testing black hole by teaching us the black art of performance testing.